Yesterday, I received my entry back from a contest. It was too funny. Judges are crazy when they say something like, "You have a strong voice." They actually type those words on the comment section of the score sheet TWO TIMES. Really. And then they score me a 3 out of 5 in answer to the question, "Is the voice strong?" LOL! Gotta love it.
Or one judge said I had an intriguing plot. While the other one said there was big issues with the plot. Considering this contest did not require a synopsis, how did she know?
Oh, oh, and the judge that objected to my steamy chapter and even told me "I was done reading then." I thought of telling the coordinator as the judge should've told the coordinator she didn't like sex in the first chapter and give it over to another to judge. I guess that's why she gave me low scores in areas that didn't make sense and proved she didn't read the whole thing. ::sigh::
I feel sorry for her is all I can say about that.
You know when I read an entry, I don't go by my personal taste. I look at the writing and does it meet the criteria of the contest's score sheet. In the Golden Heart I gave a historical entry with time travel in it a 9 (highest score). Even though I dislike time travels, I thought it was what a book should be, easy to read and actually good.
I think the whole Chapter Contest Machine needs to be revamped. So many people enter that there is a serious shortage of judges, which makes the contest coordinators beg for anybody to be a judge, which then means the poor souls whose manuscripts are judged by these untrained anybodies are s.o.l. (And don't you dare tell anyone that I wrote that wholly unreadable run-on sentence! :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you're coordinating our LHAoE. I wish we could require our judges to take our training course, but I know we can't.
Contests are just a crap shoot. You know that.
I made the mistake of volunteering to judge a contest's romantic suspense category a while back. I was appalled at how many of the entries started out with the most gruesome murder scenes imaginable. In spite of my recoil from the graphic scenes, I tried to focus on the writing and the story. I think I managed to give good feedback. And then I made sure never to volunteer for this category again.
I know what you mean, JoAnn. I don't judge RS if I can help it for that same reason. And I don't normally judge "speciality genres" of contests, mainly because they include SciFi. Love watching it, dislike reading it. (Sorry to those who write it. Thankfully I'm only one person.)
ReplyDeleteHow completely & utterly exhausting. Ughh! You've got serious "girly gonads" just for being able to throw yourself out there like you do for a contest. ...Oh, and I mean, seriously...she gave you a 3 out of 5 on Voice? Good grief!
ReplyDeleteTotally crazy, isn't it? Thanks, sweet Candi.
ReplyDeleteYour score sheet just shows how subjective it all is and proves we should keep subbing until we find a judge or an editor who's on our wavelength.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for the editor, Suzanne. Thanks.
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