During the holidays, I judged several entries for different contests. And there was one consistent thread throughout the entries with lower scores. They needed critique partners.
One entry had a beautiful, unique historical story I had to take off points for so many minor things. Now if the contest doesn’t have many historical entries she may still final, but historicals are usually like romantic suspense, overflowing with entries. So chances are she'll miss out. But I made sure to tell her how much I liked her story and pointed out the few areas she needed to work on and especially told her to get a critique partner. Someone who would appreciate her story and not bother her voice. She had a good voice.
I hate giving low scores and thankfully rarely do, but several of the entries had boatloads of simple errors: missing words, misspelled/mistyped words, and present tense versus past tense (like using is instead of was). All were errors a critique partner or even a reader-friend could’ve caught.
One thing is for sure, I understand more than anyone how easy it is to make those simple mistakes. Too often I’ll change a section in my manuscript before sending it to a contest and then realize later I had left out a word, used the wrong word (desert versus dessert), etc. By not letting someone look it over I’ve shot myself in the foot. Heavens, if you read my blog, you see me do stuff like that all the time.
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