[sindohte]

I have always enjoyed writing. As a psych person, writing has at times become a necessary evil. Every day I am cranking out something like case notes, treatment plans, evaluations, letters to the court, etc., etc., Two things that have been ingrained upon my brain by countless professors and supervisors along the way is concise, accurate documentation and not writing anything that cannot be supported by either your direct observation or backed up by research.

Okay, now that I have bored you to tears with my job, let us move on to how this all relates to fanfic. The writing of fanfiction is about being creative and taking an idea sprung from the soil of of Tolkien's fertile genius and making it grow into something of your own. However, as I have read the Tolkien literature over the past year or so I have encountered what I consider haphazard, if not downright shoddy research. I am not saying that folks have to read Tolkien's books 'x' number of times, but I do think double checking a fact in a story might be a good thing.

Here are some of my peeves off the top of my head -

1. Geography - If you don't know how many days it would take to get from point A to point B, it might be better to leave things vague. There is nothing worse than reading about how Legolas traveled from Rivendell to Minas Tirith in a single time I know Leggy is super-Elf, but that is a mite bit ridiculous.

2. Names - I will leave that discussion to some of the more passionate voices such as Mora on this particular subject. All that I will say is that if Tolkien is not already rolling around in his grave over Legolas having Glorfindel's baby, then he is sure as shootin' is spinning wildly and shooting flames over the fact that someone has named a Tolkien OFC Lothirielakiarwenna. It is a grave disservice (pardon the pun) to not try to use a Tolkienesque name for a character, especially since Tolkien was a linguist. The only exception would be girls named Amanda who fell into ME.

3. Not Properly Giving Credit to a Source aka Plagarism - This is for the fanfics that lift whole chunks of dialogue from the movies and then don't give Peter, Fran and Phillipa proper credit for thinking up the freaking words in the first place. I know that this particular trio are all now richer than crap, but still give them thanks for creating the words your characters are using.

4. "But it's AU" - I love AU stories because they allow me to look at Tolkienverse in a novel fashion. However, I think authors should not label their stories AU merely as a way to circumvent doing research.

5. Googling - As much as I love that search engine, it is a risky way to do research. There are so many personal websites that people have put together seem to be regurgitations if not downright plagarisms of other websites like the Encyclopedia of Arda.

Here is the little rule that I use when doing Tolkien research -

Primary Source - anything written by J. R. R. Tolkien while he was alive

Primary Source * - I put the Silmarillion into this category because Christopher Tolkien had to edit his father's work after his death and turn his father's multiple drafts of various bits and pieces about early Middle Earth history into a coherent narrative.

Secondary Source - The Atlas of Middle Earth by Fonstad is an example of this. Tolkien developed his own geography for his world. Fonstad just did a good job of organizing his information into one book and providing maps and diagrams of things.

Tertiary Source - That would be me throwing up a website calling the Geography of Middle Earth and freely plagarizing Fonstad's hard work, without giving her proper credit and/or not checking my facts.

What are folks thoughts on the need for research? I personally think it is nothing more than an excuse for laziness to say something like, "I am writing for fun. People should be more interested in the story that I have to tell and not how many days it took to travel the Paths of the Dead." While everyone who writes fanfic is hopefully deriving some fun from the experience, the writer should also take pride in what they are writing. And to me, taking pride in what I write means doing research. And it goes without saying that I love research I do think that there is a happy medium and every story does not have to be turned into a scholarly essay bristling with references at the end, in an effort to show how the genius of the writer at doing research. But imho, research is not a bad thing.

Okay, now that I have had my rant, what are some good secondary resources that you like to use for making sure your Tolkien facts are correct? Your resources can be in either paper or electronic form.

[BittenBuggy]

Generally, I only work off of Tolkien's books. Because really, what else is canon?

However, if I need a quick referrence because I dont want to shuffle through all the of HoME volumes:

Andreth! - She is by far my most favoritest And she generally gives you about a page more answer than you asked for.

EoA - Mostly I use it when looking up names I'm unfamiliar with, just to remind myself.

Wiki - Lots more info than EoA and it covers some HoME info.

[Thuriniel]

Like BB, I use mostly the books. But I always have handy "The Complete Guide to Middle-earth." It's a quick reference book to know who is who, what is what, and where is where .

My next purchase would be "Atlas of Middle-earth," I would love to have all the maps together in one place instead of going through every single book in search of the right map.

Finally, I have done some other type of research that is non-Middle-earth related ... such as, how do you care for a broken nose? In my fic Leggy gets his nose broken and I made sure I learnt as much as I could about such injuries !

[Thuriniel]

I forgot!

Like Mora has her petpeeve with Sindarin names ... I do have my pet peeve with half-invented Sindarin. So, as part of my research I took a Sindarin class and I work hard to get the translations as accurate as possible (although I'm sure I miss a mutation here and there occasionally !).

In all honestly, I love to do research ... I'm a happy bunny at the library!

[Ellbee]

I've read several essays on the Christopher stuff, and I'm trying to plod through the Silm, but those are mostly for just interesting tidbits or atmosphere, since I only consider what Tolkien finished and published himself to be absolute canon. I have also used the name thingie at Council of Elrond, for when we just have to have an Elvish name, and I've got a huge-ass map of M-E framed on my upstairs wall. Otherwise I just use the books, LotR and The Hobbit. I don't know how many times we've used a placeholder like Whatshisname or Somedamnplace as we're writing our stories, until I go back and look up exactly what that town was called or what that guy's name was. I think we replaced them all, but if we missed any, be sure and let me know.

I have been known to just pull things out of the air at times; in one story I said it took about two weeks to get from Mirkwood to Rivendell on horseback. I have absolutely no research to back that up, it's just an educated guess. If it's wildly wrong, it apparently doesn't detract from the piece enough for anyone to call me on it. I became aware early on in this fandom that many people read Tolkien fanfic with an eye more to evaluation and adherence to their own interpretations, rather than entertainment, so I try to keep my focus narrow. That way I can spotlight the things I'm perfectly confident in, and avoid painting a target on my forehead.

-Ell

[SpaceWeavil]

I enjoy the research for a fic almost as much as I enjoy writing the story itself. What I tend to do is check one of the reference books like The Complete Guide to Middle Earth, then back it up by looking it up in the text that book has drawn from, so if it says something is mentioned in the Silm, I go look there next. I don’t have all the HoME books yet as I couldn’t afford to get them all in one whack and so get parts when I have the money. I don’t really use websites for Tolkien-related research, only for other things like military strategy or occasional bits of trivia for fics.

Saying that I have downloaded most of my Sindarin and Quenya material from the internet, though I had to sift through a lot until I found accurate wordlists and grammar essays. I’m self taught in both those, as languages are a hobby anyway and I’m used to just working away myself. So for things like naming etc. and for my Sindarin I am always willing to admit I may be in error somewhere, but it isn’t from lack of research, if you know what I mean. Everything I write in elvish is correct to the best of my knowledge.

I also have to give credit to my friend Joanne, who is an ER nurse and helps me out all the time with medical stuff, especially for my challenge entry ‘Alliance’. She’s been brilliant putting up with all my dumb questions on that. I’ve got the advantage also of having an eclectic collection of reference books all over the place, which are either from my days at theatre school, when I needed ideas for stage designs, or from my tour guiding. That job taught me never to state something unless I could back it up with facts, as you never know when you’ll get an expert in that particular field on the tour.

As for distances/times for travelling, I get most of those from the Atlas of Middle Earth, though I very rarely use anything like that.

But it’s fun to research, imho anyway

[NancyBrooke]

I had a professor in college who was very good at not saying "wrong" or "right" but saying "is this supported in the text?" That made a huge impact on me, and that's how I write my fic.

My resources are
1) the trilogy
2) the hobbit, if applicable
3) the silm, if applicable
4) the Complete Guide
5) the Atlas of ME
6) websites like the Encyclopedia of Arda, Annals of Arda (good for quickie questions)
7) you all

But I try to root everything in the text; can I point to a page and say "there - that's where I got that idea ..."

The research always teaches me something new; that's why I enjoy the trivia thread, too.

[Viv]

I write things other than fanfic, and those publishable things I hold to an excruciating standard in terms of research. Fic is my vacation from that headache. See, I figure that fanfic is a community (unlike professional writing), so if I post a story that includes a blond Faramir, it's natural and happy-making when someone leaves a review and says, "Hey, you dork, Faramir has dark hair." I fix the oops, and everybody's content.

I don't have the time or brainspace to keep Tolkien's complete opus in my head. I have enough trouble trying to keep my own made-up worlds straight.

Which is why I worship the folks around here who know Tolkien better than Chris himself.

[sindohte]

[Viv]

[sindohte]

Sheesh Viv! You know how to make me go boo hoo All those poor baby fanfics that will never see the light of day. And if these stories violate canon only in some minor way, then just stick a footnote at the bottom and finish the darling piece of writing. Then leave it up to the research fiends like me to scurry over to my groaning bookshelf and look up the obscure passage that you are talking about in your footnote.

[SpaceWeavil]

When I read a fic, if it’s full of errors, it puts me off. So compulsive research is a good thing from my POV, since it means I can read the story and pay attention to the story. Some things I tell myself I should forgive, like a Sherlock Holmes story I read once set in 1889, where they crossed over Tower Bridge. I told myself that not everyone would know that it wasn’t completed then and wouldn’t open until 1894, but still, I suppose if you are going to write something into a story you should check. I certainly would have. The same story, however, also had Holmes and Watson crossing over ‘the Thames Bridge’ at one point. That’s just laziness – the writer can’t even look up a map of London and find the name of a bridge?

It just makes it easier to enjoy stories if the information in them is correct. But that might just be because I used to have to check other guides for accuracy, so I’m used to listening or reading out for errors.

[SpaceWeavil]

[Andreth]

I agree with SpaceWeavil - there are times when I enjoy the research of a story more than I enjoy writing the story. And research is a necessary ability in *all* writing, not just fanfic. Have to agree with SpaceWeavil again - if somebody's going to be reading a story about a particular topic/time/genre/fanfic, chances are they have a working knowledge of that subject and you owe it to your readers to, at the very least, have a working knowledge of it yourself.

Tolkien left too much information (often conflicting!) about Middle-earth for someone to unerringly remember it all, even after you've studied it for a few decades. Viv pointed out something in one of my stories once concerning a scene where Melian returns to Valinor after Luthien dies. She pointed out a glaring omission on my part - What was Melian's response to coming back to Valinor and seeing the dead Trees, which had been alive when she left an Age or so before? My first thought was, oh crap, I hadn't even thought of that aspect and my second thought was how can I fix this? We all need help keeping it straight from time to time and there's nothing wrong with that. The ones that are annoying are the people who think that you're just being mean, wasting their time, and/or flaming them if you leave them anything other than a totally kewl review for their latest literary wet dream.

I'm all for finding a new spin on something or finding a different and interesting way to reinterpret a character, scene or idea. But come on people, you have to *know* something in order to reinterpet it. Like Sindohte said, slapping an AU label on something is not a carte blanche to write whatever you want because you're too lazy to do research and you want to play Tiger Beat dress-up with Tolkien's characters. That's not AU, because then you don't even know enough about the original universe, let alone how to create an alternate one based on it. Those kinds of stories belong at FF.net, not at a site where the admins are trying to keep a modicum of quality in the stories.

Ok, there endeth my rant. Whew! I'm always hesitant to say anything about this because I don't want new writers to feel like I'm discouraging them or looking down my nose at them because their story isn't perfect. I am always happy to help a new writer in any way I can, it's the new writers who think they don't need any improvement that irk me.

[Viv]