Silmarillion Storybook

I added a few sites to the Additional Information page of the Resources section of my storybook project. With this update, my project is now complete. Based on the feedback I received, I’d say the project accomplished the goals I set out for it in my introduction. I learned so much about the Silmarilion stories through creating this project, and I am very happy with how it turned out.

As I was browsing on Ted Nasmith’s site, I found a new page called Sketches and Studies in his Silmarillion gallery. This page has so many images of events in my stories! The illustrations themselves aren’t always as good a quality and the digital images are definitely a much lower resolution, but I really wish I had found some of these earlier! I found a couple that I just had to add, Luthien’s Lament Before Mandos and The Oath of Feanor.

Under the Resources section of my storybook project, I created an About Site Design page and an About Site Author page; but I did not have time to create any content for them. It made sense; I have focused on creating the stories for the projet and have seen these documentation pages as finishing touches. Looking back, though, I realize that people were looking at the project while I was still writing stories; it would have been nice to have these pages available from the beginning.

I have now added the content for these pages. The About Site Design page contains general information about my use of HTML and CSS, as well as the specific code used to create the main navigation. The About Site Author talks about how this storybook project has combined two of the things I am most interested in: mythology/fantasy and the Internet.

I finished the frametale for my storybook project. I also went through all the stories and cleaned them up: adding some details, removing unnecessary details, and changing some names or phrases for consistency to make the whole project fit together. I was having some difficulty figuring out how to end the frametale. As I talked through it, I think it all fell into place. I had to change most of the chronological details to make it lead up to the ending, but I think it turned out just how I want it. It’s been neat to see how I have made a journey from my original plan (which was alright) to this final version that makes perfect sense to me. I have never done much creative writing, but I think it’s definitely something I could get into!

One of the most popular comments that I have received about my storybook project is that it needs a glossary. Even though I tried to limit the use of proper names in my project, there are just so many character- and place-names involved. I proofread all my stories today and made a list of all the proper names; I modified the descriptions from the Index of Names published in the Silmarillion and created a Glossary of Names page. It turned out to be much longer than I expected, but I think it will help make the stories a little easier to follow.

I have now added the About The Silmarillion page to my storybook project. This page contains historical background about Tolkien and an overview of the Silmarillion. I made some corrections to the About This Project page and slightly revised the content. I illustrated both of these pages with thumbnails from the Image Gallery.

For my storybook project, I have provided the original texts of the stories I have been retelling. I think this gives readers a better understanding of my interpretation of the stories, and it gives them a chance to read a small sample of Tolkien’s writing. For some of these sources, however, I could not provide the texts: the books of the History of Middle-Earth series and The Letters of Tolkien. I have now included the texts for these sources, listed below:

• Ring of Barahir
  • Excerpt from Canto VII of “The Lay of Leithian” (PDF, 39 KB)
  • Excerpt from Canto IX of “The Lay of Leithian” (PDF, 43 KB)
• Luthien
  • Excerpt from The Letters of Tolkien (PDF, 53 KB)
• Tuor Marries Idril
  • Excerpt from “The Fall of Gondolin” in The Book of Lost Tales 2 (PDF, 38 KB)

I have now finished my last story for my storybook project: Tuor Marries Idril. It is the first romantic story I have written for this project (even my Beren and Luthien stories are not really romantic), and I think it provides a nice balance and transition within the project.

Focusing on Tuor and Idril’s relationship has left a big gap between the two Tuor stories; I will have to fill that gap in the frametale. The first Tuor story ends when Tuor leaves the sea and heads to Gondolin. After that, he meets the guide that Ulmo sends him (Voronwe) and they make the long journey to Gondolin. Then Tuor presents Ulmo’s message to Turgon. Turgon does not heed Ulmo’s warning, instead trusting in the defenses of his city. He invites Tuor to dwell in Gondolin, and Tuor accepts. Turgon builds Tuor a house up in the hills that surround the valley; Tuor had lived there for seven years when my second Tuor story begins.

Next week I will be writing my story about Gondolin. I’m still not exactly sure on what part of the story I want to focus: Tuor’s Journey to Gondolin, Tuor’s Marriage to Idril, or the Fall of Gondolin. I think it will be on Tuor and Idril’s marriage, because the set up for the story in the frametale will be the question about Elf/Man marriages.

I searched for images to illustrate the story. I have images for all three parts of the story, though only one of Idril. I have uploaded them to the Gondolin story page.

I finished my sixth story, Ulmo Appears to Tuor, for my storybook project. Since Tuor is my favorite Tolkien character, I had already found some good images, like John Howe’s Ulmo, Lord of Waters; but I also found some exciting new images, like Anke Katrin Eissmann’s Lord of Waters and Peter Xavier Price’s Tuor’s Sighting at the Pool of Ivrin.

This last image illustrates an event from Tuor’s story that doesn’t appear in my storybook project. Tonight I realized that I could have done my entire storybook project over Tuor and been very happy. These would have been the seven stories:

1. Tuor’s Birth and Fostering by the Elves
2. Tuor Comes to Vinyamar
3. Ulmo Appears to Tuor
4. Tuor Comes to Gondolin
5. Tuor, Idril, and Earendil
6. The Fall of Gondolin
7. Tuor and Idril Sail into the West

This would have given my project a much narrower focus. Currently, many people are reaching their “proper name tolerance level” (as Laura calls it); I think narrowing the focus could have helped make it more enjoyable. Halo’s storybook project focuses on one Tolkien character, Celebrian, and I think one of the reasons her project works so well is the narrow focus. But I guess it’s too late to start over now! Seriously, I’m very happy with how my project is coming along and what a great experience it has been for me to explore the stories I did choose in such great depth.

My storybook project reached a moment of crisis this week. I tried writing the story of “Nimloth and the Downfall of Numenor” a number of times. I just can’t get into the story. It’s a great tale of heroism in the face of opposition and it plays an important role in the history of Gondor that comes down to Lord of the Rings; but it just doesn’t move me. I have told a number of people in the class multiple times that I couldn’t find a way to fit Tuor into my frametale, even though he’s my favorite character from Tolkien. As I reflected more and more on my difficulties writing my Numenor story, my mind drifted to the stories of Tuor. My desktop wallpaper is a picture of Tuor; I even renamed my blog “Vale of Tumladen,” after the location of the hidden city of Gondolin that Tuor discovers. I thought this renaming would help get Tuor off my mind, but it did not. At last, I have decided to reorganize my frametale and my stories again.

I moved the Voyage of Earendil to the end; this makes sense since it concludes the story of the Silmarils begun in my first story, the Oath of Feanor. After the two stories of Beren and Luthien, I will have two stories about Tuor: Ulmo Appears To Tuor and Tuor Reaches Gondolin. In the frametale, I will have the main character ask if any other men married Elves and what happened to them; this will transition nicely from the Luthien story to the Tuor stories.

This upcoming week I will be writing my Numenor story. I have titled it “Nimloth and the Downfall of Numenor”; the main story will be when Isildur retrieved a fruit from the white tree of Numenor and brought it to Middle-Earth. I found the images for the story tonight and have added them to the image gallery and to the Numenor story page.

Throughout this semester, we have been looking at other storybook projects in the class and leaving feedback at our class discussion board. Here’s some of the feedback I have received over the weeks:

• The structure and design of the site are really awesome. It has got to be one of the easiest sites to navigate that I have ever used. Also, I think your image gallery is very well done. The language you use in the stories also seems to accurately represent the original text. Overall, I think the stories are very well-written, and impressively presented.
• You are doing an awsome job at capturing the ideas and feelings of the Silm, you amaze me really. My favorite story of yours is the crossing story, I appreciate that you had Galadriel telling the story.
• Wow, I haven’t read the Silmarillion in so long. These stories bring back some great memories of all the wonderful tales in that book.
• Oh my gosh, your web page is soooooo cool. … I have been reading your stories every week, and I love them all. The way you combined using the students talking about the movie and then included a LOTR frame tale in that is just great. It was a great way to combine both of your ideas. As I have said before, I am very partial to the Beren and Luthien story. The way you tell the story makes it that much better.
• I absolutely love the frametale you are telling your stories in. It is so believable and common day style! Your webpage set-up is amazing … very very good! … i was a little lost with some of the names, but thats ok. Maybe you could put a little vocab list up for your stories just to let people know where certain places are and who lives there or something. Just an idea… I do really like that you included a lot of pictures in your project. I think they really add to it!
• This time I read the story of Beren and Finrod. Man does this story bring back some great memories of me reading this book. I had forgotten exactly what happened to Finrod but thanks to you now I remember. I am so excited to read your story about Earendil.
• Loved your storybook project. … Your website is amazing and I can tell you are a picture kind of guy. Thanks for sharing.
• I read all your stories and I admire you for having read the Silmarillion. … I like the last story [Beren and Luthien] the best. It is one of my favorite. … Great job.
• I really like the look of your website. It has really clean lines and is easy to navigate. I am wholly unfamiliar with Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, so the stories were fresh and new to me. … My favorite story is “The Crossing of Helcaraxe,” mostly because I am familiar with Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings movies but also because you tell her story in a really interesting way using dialogue. Great job!

Thanks for the great feedback! I’m glad that you are enjoying reading these stories as much as I am enjoying writing them.

I called the story for this week “The Voyage of Earendil.” The story focuses on Earendil’s plea to the Valar (“the Gods”) to grant pardon to the Noldor and peace to Men. Earendil’s father Tuor is one of my favorite of Tolkien’s characters; his meeting with Ulmo and his journey to Gondolin are both among my favorite stories. But they didn’t really fit into the flow of my frametale or my goals for this project, but I was able to mention briefly these two stories in this story.

I think I am being a little fanatic about Blogger right now. I decided to create a blog in which I would record updates to my Silmarillion Storybook project, just like I did for my Stick-Figure Iliad site. It took me about five minutes to create it and configure it to publish right in the storybook site, where I had an update page before. Check it out!

This upcoming week, I will be writing my fifth story. It will be about Earendil, but I’m not exactly sure what particular part of the story. I think Earendil’s choice to be a man or an elf would fit in with what I have been talking about so far, and mentioning that Elrond had the same choice would be illuminating for people who know about Lord of the Rings.

I searched for Earendil images this weekend, and I uploaded them to the Earendil story page.

This past week I did a lot of proof-reading and revising. I found some typographical errors, of course, and corrected them. But I also did some thinking about how the frametale was progressing. It seemed to me that I had the stories in the wrong order! So I moved the Ring of Barahir and the Luthien stories up to number 3 and number 4. Of course, this meant I had to revise the frametale links in between them.

I found a factual error. I said that Orodreth went with Feanor in the ships across the sea to Middle-Earth. I tried to find this in the Silmarillion, but I couldn’t. I did some more research and found that Tolkien originally had Orodreth go with Feanor, but struck his name out in the passage because he was changing Orodreth’s character to be closer to Finrod than with his other brothers.

I also found some consistency errors. They biggest one involved the use of the term “Valar.” I had planned to just call them the Gods and not have to get into the “theology” of Middle-Earth. But in my Luthien story I talked about the Valar quite a bit, and I mentioned Iluvatar. I’m not sure which way to go, but I think I’m going to have to introduce some “theology” in the frametale. Maybe I can have one of the characters in the frametale say a little something about it. I also need to discuss the halls of Mandos before I get to Finrod’s death.

For this week, we have no assignment to add anything to the site. I changed the design a little again, moving the submenus from out of the navigation box to across the top of the page. (I was very happy with the new information architecture and didn’t change it at all; but the old design just wasn’t working.) I still have some thinking to do about color and typography, but I like the overall positioning of all the elements.

Our assignment this week is to assess our projects so far; overall, I am pretty happy with mine. I received some really positive feedback from another Tolkien fanatic in the class (her project is Tolkien-related as well):

You are doing an awesome job at capturing the ideas and feelings of the Silmarillion. My favorite story of yours is the crossing story, I appreciate that you had Galadriel telling the story. The last paragraph of your Luthien story could be linked with my page as I tell of how Arwen feels; we must be on the same wave length.

I’m looking forward to reading some of the other projects this week!