LOTR Community Challenges

LOTR Community Challenges is a gen The Lord of the Rings LiveJournal challenge community. Although the name of the community is LOTR, it actually accepts challenge stories based in the Tolkien fandom—including, but not limited to, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Children of Húrin, and the various volumes of The History of Middle-earth, as well as adaptations of those works, such as the movies by director Peter Jackson.
==Background==
The challenges were begun by ceshaughnessy, Pearl Took, and Dreamflower in 2008. At that time, the popular hobbit-centric Marigold's Challenges had gone on indefinite hiatus, and the three fans were missing the monthly challenges. A feature of Marigold's Challenges was that while the stories were joined by a common monthly theme, each author was also assigned a personal prompt or element. It was decided to broaden the base of the stories. By 2008, the boost given the Lord of the Rings fandom by the movies had begun to fade, and it was thought better to include as much of the Tolkien fandom as possible.
The Challenge community is a sister community to LotR GenFic Community a gen LotR mailing list on Yahoo! which is run by the same co-moderators.
The first challenge was posted at a separate LiveJournal, as the community had not been set up yet. That LJ has since been purged by LJ as inactive, but the stories are still available at the community's archive, Many Paths to Tread.
==Challenges==
===2008===
*	May 2008
Theme: Coronation
Prompt: three random elements
	Stories: 8
*	June 2008
Theme: Father's Day
	Prompt: Quotation from canon
	Stories: 14
*	July 2008]
Theme: Summertime
	Prompt: A starter sentence
	Stories: 17
*	August 2008
Theme: Point of View (writing an unfamiliar POV)
	Prompt: each author was assigned a shape, a color and a number
	Stories: 19
*	September 2008
Theme: Young/Old (stories needed to feature two characters, one old and one young, interacting)
	Prompt: three to five specific adjectives, assigned each author
	Stories: 14
*	October 2008
Theme: Halloween/Harvest
	Prompt: a canon quotation
	Stories: 7
*	November 2008
Theme: Song/Poetry
	Prompt: a line from a song or poem to be used as a story title
	Stories: 7
*	December 2008 (Yule Fic Exchange)
Authors wrote to the requests of the persons assigned to them.
Stories: 14
===2009===
*	January 2009
Theme: "Potluck" The first annual "potluck" challenge, in which authors either completed an unfinished story from earlier in the year, or chose an unused prompt from among the 2008 challenges.
	Prompt: "leftover" prompts
	Stories: 11
*	February 2009
Theme: Light and Shadow
	Prompt: gapfiller, with an assigned gap
	Stories: 7
*	March 2009
Theme: The Ides of March (all stories were to be set on March 15, 3019 of the Third Age of Middle-earth)
	Prompt: a starter sentence
	Stories: 10
*	April 2009
Theme: Renewal
Prompt: a bird (each author assigned a different species to incorporate into the story)
	Stories: 7
•	May 2009
Theme: Fix the Movies ( each author to write a "fixit" for a perceived "flaw" in the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings)
Prompt: a flower (each author assigned a different one to incorporate into the story)
	Stories: 9
*	June 2009
Theme: The Wedding of Your Nightmares (a story about wedding disasters)
Prompt: each author had a line from the old saying "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue".
	Stories: 5
*	July 2009
Theme: Some Like it Hot
Prompt: This was the first annual fixed-length-ficlet challenge. Each author chose a number between 101 and 400, and wrote a ficlet of that exact number of words.
	Stories: 13
*	August 2009
Theme: Out on a Limb
Prompt: a tree (each author assigned a different type to incorporate into the story)
	Stories: 7
*	September 2009
Theme: September 22—each story was to have taken place on that date in Middle-earth during any year the author wished.
	Prompt: a starter sentence
	Stories: 4
*	October 2009
Theme: Myth
Prompt: a fruit (each author assigned a different type to incorporate into the story)
	Stories: 6
*	November 2009
Theme: Dialogue (stories to be written entirely or almost entirely in dialogue)
	Prompt: four random elements
	Stories: 5
*	December 2009 (Yule Fic Exchange)
Authors wrote to the requests of the persons assigned to them.
Stories: 11
===2010===
*	January 2010
Theme:"Potluck" The annual "potluck" challenge, in which authors either completed an unfinished story from earlier in the year, or chose an unused prompt from among the 2009 challenges.
	Prompt: "leftover" prompts
	Stories: 14
*	February 2010
Theme: Send it in a Letter (stories to be written in the form of, or contain, a letter)
Prompt: a particular type of letter (e.g. "condolence", "love", "poison pen", etc.
	Stories: 9
*	March 2010
Theme: Mad as a March Hare (writing a character OOC for a good reason)
	Prompt: a type of weather ("rainy", "windy", etc.)
	Stories: 8
*	April 2010
Theme: Non-fiction
	Prompt: No prompts, authors could choose their own topic
	Essays: 4
*	May 2010
Theme: Tying Up Loose Ends (gapfillers)
	Prompt: authors assigned a gap
	Stories: 6
*	June 2010
Theme: The White Tree (stories about any of the White Trees of Arda)
	Prompt: a starter sentence
	Stories: 7
*	July 2010
Theme: Short and Sweet
Prompt: This was the first annual fixed-length-ficlet challenge. Each author chose a number between 101 and 400, and wrote a ficlet of that exact number of words.
	Stories: 14
*	August 2010
Theme: Two Sides to Everything (story to include an argument or debate of some sort)
	Prompt: the topic of the argument
	Stories: 11
*	September 2010
Theme: Back to School (education)
	Prompt: a subject of learning ("math", "history", "art", etc.)
	Stories: 5
*	October 2010
Theme: Believe it or Not (story to contain an unbelievable or supernatural element)
	Prompt: an adjective
	Stories: 16
*	First Remix Challenge
Authors were assigned a fellow author in order to remix one of her stories.
Stories: 9
*	November 2010
Theme: Pairs Drabbles
Prompt: a pair of associated words to include in a drabble (such as "hot/cold", "sock/shoe", or "boy/girl")
	Stories: 20
*	December 2010 (Yule Fic Exchange)
Authors wrote to the requests of the persons assigned to them.
Stories: 18
===2011===
*	January 2011
Theme:"Potluck" The annual "potluck" challenge, in which authors either completed an unfinished story from earlier in the year, or chose an unused prompt from among the 2010 challenges.
	Prompt: "leftover" prompts
	Stories: 12
*	February 2011
Theme: Hearts and Flowers
Prompt: a type of love, a type of heart, a type of flower (each author had one of each)
	Stories: 12
*	March 2011
Theme: Lion and Lamb (show two sides to the same character)
	Prompt: a pair of opposite mood words (such as "hateful/loving")
	Stories: 7
*	April 2011
Theme: Poetry
	Prompt: a random word to include
	Poems: 13
*	May 2011
Theme: The Merrie Month of May (humor)
	Prompt: a starter sentence
	Stories: 3
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