What do judges look for in a story?<\/h3>\n![\"horror](\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/horror-wine-225x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Twilight. A glass of wine. A view of Manly Beach. Plus a stack of horror stories!<\/p><\/div>\n
The most important thing to realise about competitions, and slush piles, and submission calls, is that the reader reading them has a heck of a lot of reading to do. They are also, generally, reading in their spare time. So sometimes I would sit down with my laptop and a glass of wine at home, and have 30 stories to read but only an hour in which to read them.<\/p>\n
I never managed it. 10 stories per hour was my maximum. Still, in that hour I wanted to read as much as possible. Some stories made this easy for me \u2013 they flowed well, had an interesting character doing something interesting, and showed me the action happening scene-by-scene, so I thanked them for it with my scoring. Other stories made the hour hard work, with their telling and info-dumping and my struggling to understand what was going on, and they were also scored accordingly.<\/p>\n
![\"shiny](\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/shiny-new-things-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a>Shiny new things distract!<\/p><\/div>\n
So I looked forward to finding the easy stories, the ones that simply stole time from me, such that when I looked up the sky was darker and my hour mostly gone. Those stories had plots I hadn\u2019t read before, characters I\u2019d never met, and made me think too. Of those stories, some then stuck in my mind longer than others, and they got extra marks. A totally new type of antagonist or apocalypse, for example, was likely to stay in my memory longer than one I\u2019d read\/seen before, even if a writer had a fresh perspective.<\/p>\n
Are judges influenced by their own preferences?<\/h3>\n
Yes and no.<\/p>\n
No because I have a strong preference for first person writing and often select my for-pleasure reading on that basis, yet this preference didn\u2019t influence my marking at all. So the winner of the 2014 AHWA flash fiction competition is written in third person.<\/p>\n
Yes because I like plot-driven stories with unique characters who exist in an interesting place with a problem that must be solved. If nothing really happens in a story, then it\u2019s not really for me. I like to be compelled to keep reading, not just curious, and this preference undoubtedly influenced my marking when it came to the higher scores. If a story succeeded on all its basic levels, and all its higher levels, of course my personal preference gave it extra marks! For the AHWA competition though, there were two other judges who did the same, so the ultimate winners were those whose stories appealed to us all \u2013 a high achievement indeed.<\/p>\n
What let stories down?<\/h3>\n
A series of events does not make a story.<\/p>\n
\n- If a character has no problem to solve, be it how to save the world or where to next get a drink, then they are a passive player in that story and probably shouldn\u2019t be its main character.<\/li>\n
- If a character\u2019s problem isn’t personally important to them, then a reader is going to struggle to care about that problem.<\/li>\n
- If the character is simply observing what another character does or doesn\u2019t do, then perhaps they\u2019re not the right person to tell your story?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A lot of well-written stories failed to recognise this and\/or deal with it on page one. Predictability, too much telling, too many seen-before characters, clich\u00e9, false suspense, and a general lack of originality also let otherwise well-told stories down.<\/p>\n
What really turned you off as a reader?<\/h3>\n
Stories that were hard to understand, both due to the way they were written and worldbuilding issues; and stories that were little more than a recount of an already well-known tale. So if I knew how a story would end just from reading the first paragraph, it wasn\u2019t going to be a winner. And if I enjoyed a story until I got to the end, but then didn\u2019t really understand what had happened to reach that ending, that wasn\u2019t going to be a winner either.<\/p>\n
Oh, and suspension of disbelief too. If a character does something that no one I know would ever do, the story wasn\u2019t going to work for me.<\/p>\n
What prevailed \u2013 ideas or polish?<\/h3>\n![\"Shapter](\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Shapter-Torn-Papers-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>Polish your stories!<\/p><\/div>\n
The best stories were of course those that had both polish and great ideas. At the lower end of the scale were those that had neither. In the middle were those stories that had one or the other, but not both. That said, those stories with a good idea but that were hard to read tended to get a lower score than those not-so-good ideas that were well told. If a story is hard to read, it loses readers, it loses me.<\/p>\n
Were there a lot of first drafts?<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Twilight. A glass of wine. A view of Manly Beach. Plus a stack of horror stories!<\/p><\/div>\n
The most important thing to realise about competitions, and slush piles, and submission calls, is that the reader reading them has a heck of a lot of reading to do. They are also, generally, reading in their spare time. So sometimes I would sit down with my laptop and a glass of wine at home, and have 30 stories to read but only an hour in which to read them.<\/p>\n
I never managed it. 10 stories per hour was my maximum. Still, in that hour I wanted to read as much as possible. Some stories made this easy for me \u2013 they flowed well, had an interesting character doing something interesting, and showed me the action happening scene-by-scene, so I thanked them for it with my scoring. Other stories made the hour hard work, with their telling and info-dumping and my struggling to understand what was going on, and they were also scored accordingly.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Shiny new things distract!<\/p><\/div>\n
So I looked forward to finding the easy stories, the ones that simply stole time from me, such that when I looked up the sky was darker and my hour mostly gone. Those stories had plots I hadn\u2019t read before, characters I\u2019d never met, and made me think too. Of those stories, some then stuck in my mind longer than others, and they got extra marks. A totally new type of antagonist or apocalypse, for example, was likely to stay in my memory longer than one I\u2019d read\/seen before, even if a writer had a fresh perspective.<\/p>\n
Are judges influenced by their own preferences?<\/h3>\n
Yes and no.<\/p>\n
No because I have a strong preference for first person writing and often select my for-pleasure reading on that basis, yet this preference didn\u2019t influence my marking at all. So the winner of the 2014 AHWA flash fiction competition is written in third person.<\/p>\n
Yes because I like plot-driven stories with unique characters who exist in an interesting place with a problem that must be solved. If nothing really happens in a story, then it\u2019s not really for me. I like to be compelled to keep reading, not just curious, and this preference undoubtedly influenced my marking when it came to the higher scores. If a story succeeded on all its basic levels, and all its higher levels, of course my personal preference gave it extra marks! For the AHWA competition though, there were two other judges who did the same, so the ultimate winners were those whose stories appealed to us all \u2013 a high achievement indeed.<\/p>\n
What let stories down?<\/h3>\n
A series of events does not make a story.<\/p>\n
- \n
- If a character has no problem to solve, be it how to save the world or where to next get a drink, then they are a passive player in that story and probably shouldn\u2019t be its main character.<\/li>\n
- If a character\u2019s problem isn’t personally important to them, then a reader is going to struggle to care about that problem.<\/li>\n
- If the character is simply observing what another character does or doesn\u2019t do, then perhaps they\u2019re not the right person to tell your story?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A lot of well-written stories failed to recognise this and\/or deal with it on page one. Predictability, too much telling, too many seen-before characters, clich\u00e9, false suspense, and a general lack of originality also let otherwise well-told stories down.<\/p>\n
What really turned you off as a reader?<\/h3>\n
Stories that were hard to understand, both due to the way they were written and worldbuilding issues; and stories that were little more than a recount of an already well-known tale. So if I knew how a story would end just from reading the first paragraph, it wasn\u2019t going to be a winner. And if I enjoyed a story until I got to the end, but then didn\u2019t really understand what had happened to reach that ending, that wasn\u2019t going to be a winner either.<\/p>\n
Oh, and suspension of disbelief too. If a character does something that no one I know would ever do, the story wasn\u2019t going to work for me.<\/p>\n
What prevailed \u2013 ideas or polish?<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Polish your stories!<\/p><\/div>\n
The best stories were of course those that had both polish and great ideas. At the lower end of the scale were those that had neither. In the middle were those stories that had one or the other, but not both. That said, those stories with a good idea but that were hard to read tended to get a lower score than those not-so-good ideas that were well told. If a story is hard to read, it loses readers, it loses me.<\/p>\n
Were there a lot of first drafts?<\/h3>\n
![\"Midnight](\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/ShapterME10-216x300.jpg\")
<\/a>