I, like others, wonder just who the judges are going to be and how we know that it is going to be judged fairly if the stories are already published on the archive and the judges are writers and readers who may be familiar with the story and already have a bias about it and the author. How will the blindness of the stories be assured? I have been a proponent of blind judging, and I want to make sure that the blind judging will actually be blind.
I have a few other questions, some of which have been asked before. I will preface this with the fact that I didn't even realize there were writing contests like this out there.
- Why just stories from the last 3 years?
- I am going to ask again, because it's important, who are the judges, and how can we be assured that it is going to be completely fair. For example, if I said that I wanted to be a judge, would I be considered or are the judges already selected? And when will we know who they are?
- Cooking stories? Just wondering why cooking stories? That seems like a really random category. I can't think of any Lois and Clark stories that even deal with cooking except Annie M's Desperately Seeking Clark. And with Christmas stories, why not Holiday stories of any kind?
- In judging the characters, why would it be important to have anything other than 'in character'? Since this is fanfic, we know the characters, and they should be sympathetic if they are in character.
- Who is the judge of unnecessary dialogue and excessive introspection. One person's excessive and unnecessary could be another person's necessity. That is very subjective and could absolutely be a function of who the judge is. For example, if I were judging, I'd like a lot of introspection, but if someone else was judging, they would want practically no introspection.
- Have there been *any* Lois and Clark stories that have a cowboy involved? I can't recall reading any. So in this case, I don't think a cowboy would be cliched.
- I also don't understand how someone can judge style when style is a matter of personal preference? What is too much internal dialogue? What is unnecessary angst? Why is using adjectives a bad thing?
I really despise subjective grading of any kind. Sorry, I am an engineer and I like formulas
. I think these awards might be better if they had exact things they were looking for rather than generalizations like "too much" than can be taken to mean different things by different people.
- Laura
