Frodo will have to be locked up in a tower in Minas Tirith and write it all down.
Otherwise he will forget half of it, and poor Bilbo will be dreadfully disappointed.

The purpose of the LOTR Fanclub Scrapbook was to preserve original poetry, fan fiction,
and other similar literary works related to J. R. R. Tolkien's works,
especially to his The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
These fan works were posted either in the past at Decipher's Official LOTR Fan Club (now defunct)
or currently at its unofficial related site, The Fellowship of Middle-earth.
Consistent with the community guidelines, all submissions are family friendly (suitable for all ages).

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Editorial Guidelines  ~  How to Submit  ~  Categories  ~  Language
 Technical Suggestions  ~  Serial Pieces  ~ The Editing Process

You posted a poem or short story you've written on the boards and want it included in the Scrapbook? You checked after a few days and there's still no sign of it here?
Let Primula know via pm at the forums.

  Editorial Guidelines

• Only items which have been posted on the boards may be submitted. The focus is community sharing.
• Submissions must be original works written by a messageboard poster. (need not be a 'fanclub member', but must have registered to post and have posted something there.) 
  
• Submissions must fit within the generally G-rated approach of the board (see note on language below).
• The Scrapbook is, with limited exceptions, intended for fan fiction, essays and poetry (see categories below). Generally speaking, reviews, reports and similar items are not intended to be the focus.  Items of this sort may be submitted, but may or may not be included.
  
• Fan fiction should add something new, but be relatively in sync with Tolkien's world, not just a simple re-telling of a portion of the story, nor so changed that Tolkien's characters and world are unrecognizable.  The focus of the tale should be Tolkien's events or characters, in one way or another.
  
• All work archived at this site must be related to Tolkien's world or to the Lord of the Rings fans themselves.  Crossovers are judged on an individual basis.
  
• Before submitting a serial story, the author needs to commit to finishing it. Unfinished and abandoned partial tales will eventually be removed at the discretion of the webmistress.
  
• Items of exceptionally poor quality will not be included. The authors may resubmit after checking their spelling, grammar, etc. if they would like.  Standard use of capitalization, punctuation and spacing is encouraged.  "Chatspeak" items are not acceptable.
  
• As this site is intended to be an archive of the Fanclub community, "post and run" writings from unknown posters may be withdrawn from the archives at a later date if that individual does not proceed on to become a part of the community.  Anyone just looking to 'get stuff on the net' is politely redirected to Fanfiction.net, Archive of Our Own (AO3) or similar fanfic review sites more suited to that goal.  At this time we do not have self-submission or onsite review capabilities, but you are welcome and encouraged to review on the boards themselves.
  

You may have noticed that little of these relate to some kind of editorial approval on quality of writing. This editor rarely presumes to make that kind of judgment of others' work. As long as the submission fits the guidelines, makes some kind of sense, and has been inspired by Tolkien's world, it probably belongs here. To leave feedback or reviews of other's work, post your thoughts on our Red Book board.  Readers are welcome to make their own judgments of what they like. Currently, the only exception to this is the Mary-Sue Romance. If you are unsure if your work may be a Mary-Sue, or are unfamiliar with this genre, you may want to check our humorous Mary-Sue Litmus Test before submitting your work.
RPF("Real-person fic") involving the actors or fans - is not accepted.

  How to Submit

Post your work on our boards, usually under the Red Book. This is sufficient. Otherwise:

Send your work as plain text or a word document by email to Primula (pm her at the boards for email info)

Include at the top of your email:

• The messageboard name of the author (handle/username).
• Title of the work.
• If it is an installment work with sections or chapters, number them.

Multi-installment works are usually collected off of the boards but if installments are missing, the author is responsible for submitting them. Serial tales must eventually be finished or they may be removed.

Submitting corrections:  If you've corrected or updated an item that is already archived, simply submit the new version and include a note that says exactly what it is replacing (the more specific, the better).  For small corrections, the pm system is fine.

Please do not assume Primula will be able to remember and find a particular paragraph in "your story"! - there are literally thousands of works kept on this site.  Tell who you are, what the title is, key phrases to search for within the affected page, etc.

  Categories

While there are no absolute rules on categories, here are the categories of work that have evolved on the scrapbook:

• Poetry
• Poems (previously referred to as Epic Poetry)
• Verses about LOTR (shorter works)
• Verses about the Fans
• Limericks
• Haiku & Double-Dactyls
• Assorted Fixed Form poetry
• Adaptations of famous poems
• Miscellaneous poetry (includes foreign language and nonsense verse)
  
• Fan Fiction
• Journals and Diaries
• Stories (Tales) - stand alone short stories, works up to 4-5 chapters in length.
  
• Serial Stories - multiple installments (closed to new serial tales 1/09)
  
• Parodies
• Serial Parodies (closed to new serial tales 1/09)
• Drabbles and 'Inklets' (vignettes or very short tales)
  
• Miscellaneous or "you had to be there."  Wordplay and in-jokes are included here.
• Songs (almost anything "sung to the tune of...")
  
• Top Ten Lists (Not limited to 10.)
• Middle-earth Reference
• Middle-earth Recipes
• Musings and Essays
  
• Other. You are welcome to suggest or submit items for:
• Definitions Page
• Links Page
• Galleries 
• Other items you deem of worth.
  

  Language

Submissions to the scrapbook must fit within the spirit of the G-rated boards and be acceptable reading for a "family friendly" site. However, it's OK to make adjustments to pieces that are caught up in the natural inflexibility of the language filters on the boards. For example:

• The riders emerged as from the pits of **** to **** the life out of the air.
• The riders emerged as from the pits of hell to suck the life out of the air.

Technical Suggestions

Stories should have clearly defined paragraphs with an empty line between paragraphs (not just an indent). Shorter paragraphs read better on the web, so consider breaking up longer paragraphs.

Many posters use Microsoft Word to compose their poetry and fan fiction. While this program has useful features such as spell-checking, it also has the tendency to add formatting which does not translate well when pasted into an email message. Some of the things that Word will often do automatically when you type include:

• Turning straight quotes [" "] into curly quotes [“ ”]
• Turning straight apostrophes [' '] into curly apostrophe [‘ ’]
• Turning double dash [--] into a long dash [—]
• Turning three dots [...] into an ellipse […]

These features in Word are useful when creating attractive text for print purposes, but are problematic for email or web. When these items are copied and pasted into an email message, they tend to turn into garbage characters, and the editor has to guess what the characters were supposed to be. This adds a lot of work at this end. To avoid this, you may:

• Within your Word document, use the option "Save as" and then select "Text Only". This will turn the special formatting into straight formatting.
• You can turn off these features in your preferences in Microsoft Word. Go to "Tools" then "AutoCorrect." Then under "Autoformat as you type," uncheck all the options in "Replace as you type". And under "AutoFormat" uncheck all the options in "Replace"

  Installment (Serial) Pieces

The Scrapbook was closed to new serial tales as of 1/09, short stories up to 4-5 chapters in length will continue to be archived.
Longer stories may be archived at alternate sites such as Henneth Anun, Stories of Arda, AO3 or FanFiction.net.   A link to the story at that location will be provided here at the author's request.
Serial journals and diaries were closed 8/10.

If you are submitting a multi-chapter story, the chapters must be numbered, with or without titles.  Send them in batches of 2-3 at a time, depending on the length.

If you are submitting a diary/journal or an ongoing story that is written in segments, you must add a sequential numbering system to the installments. That can be as simple as Part 1, Part 2, etc., or just a code number added to the post. It must be sequential and not just a diary date.

The reason for this is that it helps the editor to keep track of the story and make sure that an entry doesn't get left out.

Feel free to make suggestions regarding the organization of segments and whether you want each one named, dated, numbered, etc. in the menu.

The story must eventually have a conclusion.

Unfinished and abandoned tales may eventually be removed.  Tales that have been removed may be resubmitted in finished form, or with a firm commitment to complete it in a reasonable amount of time.

About the Editing Process

The Scrapbook is an unofficial web-site run by one fan member who has a real job and many other involvements. The Scrapbook is added to as time permits, so be patient, but also feel free to send a reminder if you think something may have slipped by. There is no staff to check on the accuracy of the site. If you see mistakes, or links that don't work, please let Primula know.

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