Last year I was a judge for the Australian Horror Writers’ Association’s short story competition, and I wrote about that experience here, setting out how I’d gone about marking the stories.
This year I was asked to judge another competition, this time the Ghostly Stringybark short story competition. It was a completely different experience! So I thought I’d tell you about it – writers might like some insight into the process, readers might identify with some of the results!
First of all, some statistics – I had 105 stories to judge, and about two months in which to read them. Although I didn’t know at the time of marking, 64% of the authors were female, 36% were male. Most authors were between 41 and 60 years old (35%), then it was the 61+ age range (30%), followed by the 21-40 year olds (22%). They were based in the following locations:
- ACT: 2%
- NSW: 38%
- QLD: 19%
- NT: 0%
- WA: 8%
- SA: 9 %
- VIC: 23%
- TAS: 2%
- International: 4%
Marking was out of 50 and marks were awarded across categories including: plot, style, character, setting, spelling/grammar, fit to theme, interest, and publishability. I loved having all these different categories because it reflects how I believe readers read – some stories aren’t particularly well-written but they’re a fun ride, some are sumptuously-written but dull in places, others are in the middle! Ranking your favourite stories can often involve a balance of judgments with no single value outweighing another.
Once I’d finished marking the stories, I re-ordered my scoresheet so I could see my top stories… Did my marking system put the best stories in my top twenty? Did any stories have a lower mark than they deserved in hindsight, now that I had read them all? I adjusted and tweaked my scores, reviewing stories a second or third time until I was 100% certain they were in the correct order. Was there a clear winner? No! I’d given two stories the same mark – a perfect 50/50! Luckily I didn’t have to choose between them, because there were other judges whose scores would determine the absolute winner.
Once every judge had given their scores, the marks were put in a spreadsheet that also showed our individual and combined story scores. I was amazed at how different we all were!
And the winner is “The Wilangarra” by David Slade.
Apparently I was the most stringent judge, giving an average score of 26/50. The other judges were a bit more generous. It didn’t matter as long as each judge was consistent, which we were. So all the low-scoring stories automatically sank to the bottom of the scoresheet with their combined low scores, and the better stories rose to the top. Then we fought among ourselves, I mean, er, discussed which stories were the winners. It worked!
There were multiple emails back and forth, with judges fighting for their favourite stories and justifying their scores. We were all very passionate! Neither of my perfect scores made it into the top three, but that was the same for the other judges too. Luckily, we all loved the combined top-scoring stories and were both happy and confident about them getting awards. The best stories are those that connect with multiple readers on different levels.
Indeed, what was most interesting about this particular method of judging is that it really did show how different one reader’s response could be to another’s. Good! Otherwise the publishing world wouldn’t have the immense variety it does and we wouldn’t have as much choice in the bookshops! What would be the point of book clubs, reviews, forums and fan clubs? Everyone would simply agree! Vive la difference!
At least so say I… what do you think? Do you value style over substance, or action over beauty? Let me know how you read, judge and rank stories in the comments below!
And congratulations to the winners of the competition! You can read about them here.
