I'm a member of a fantastic writing group called Rogue Writers, which was originally a NaNo region, but has since spun off into its own thing. On discord, we have 500+ members from around the globe!
Rogue Writers is a phenomenally supportive group of fellow writing enthusiasts. The leadership actively encourages members to better their writing craft, learn to edit their work, learn to beta read for peers, learn the art of setting and dialogue, and much more. With that goal in mind, RW hosts quarterly short story contests. You may recall I won the contest last spring! So, for the summer contest, I volunteered as a judge instead.
The experience was so much fun! I learned so much that I'm going to be able to take back to my own writing, and have a much better idea of what judges are focusing on while they're reading entries. I want to share what it was like from the other side of the submission pool.
The Contest
The prompt for July's contest was:
Include two of the following:
Visual Prompt: “Under the Rug”, by Chris Van Allsburg from the art book "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick." (This may be taken as-is or you may be creative and select details from each cue/prompt. You may use the rug, a befuddled older man, a lamp that’s about to break, a chair being used as a weapon, etc..)
Caption Text Prompt: “Two weeks passed and it happened again.” (This may refer to anything that is happening again.)
Trope : Modern Major General (“They are competent at everything… except their actual job.”)
By the end of July, we received 9 short stories, which was a smaller batch than prior contests. The stories were graded on a few criteria: how well they implemented the prompt, how well they were written technically, and how well they conveyed their own theme (topic and genre were up to the writer).
Judging the Entries
First Impressions
First, all the judges read through all the entries and took their own notes. Then, we filled out a questionnaire for each story. The questionnaire asked things like: Did this story have a cohesive plot, How well did the story implement the prompt, Did the story have an emotional theme you were able to identify, What was something you liked from this story, What was something this story could improve upon, etc. It was a pretty extensive form! This process both helped the judges organize their reactions to each story and assisted the moderators in collating the feedback.
Group Discussions
Once everyone submitted their form, each story got its turn in the group discussion. Judges talked about what they loved and didn't love about each story, picked apart each theme and prompt implementation, and brought up things we didn't understand.
This was really the most important part of this contest for me. The discussions "weighed" a lot more than the questionnaire. A lot of us changed our minds and changed our rankings because of points that were brought up in the discussion. Differing opinions were vital to getting a complete understanding of each submission. When one judge said some aspect of the story really worked for them, there was another judge chiming in that that exact thing made them not like the story. It was so interesting to see how each piece resonated differently for each person. The stories that were on the top of my list were actively disliked by others. And that's good! The stories that had the most disagreement from the judges wound up being the highest ranked. If there was something we could disagree about, it's likely the story was doing something right!
Ranking
Once the discussions were over, each judge submitted a ranked list of all the stories. The rankings were tallied up to determine the winner, and the winning story was posted in Discord for the whole group to read!
Takeaways
Really, the most important thing that I learned from this experience was that no matter what you write, someone isn't going to like it. My absolute favorite submission was not the winner. I defended that piece during the discussion, I ranked it highly at the end, and it didn't win. That doesn't mean that the story wasn't good. It just clicked for me and not for the other judges.
And that's something that I'm trying to carry forward in my own writing--a story can't click for everyone. If everyone agrees about it, that's a sign that it was boring.
Write stories that get people to argue about them. That's always the goal.
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