Too, what my results have made me think about is the different approaches I can see that judges might take in assigning point values.
One approach, I'm guessing, is to compare the story submitted with the entire spectrum of writing. A judge would read my story and ask him/herself the appropriate questions and assign rankings using all written works as his/her baseline. So, for example, my dialogue would be compared with every writer out there, from Shakespeare to Tom Clancy. In such a case, I can very well see how my story would receive very low scores, overall poor-ratings and the like. The bar has been set very high, indeed, and I would guess the majority of writers would fall well below average.
What is discouraging about this, however, is that very few of us will ever reach the levels of the great writers, thus we are doomed to always receive failing rankings. There is not much encouragement to enter any contest at all if the hope of showing well is completely non-existent. I already know that I'm no Shakespeare and don't need a contest to tell me that.
The other approach, I would imagine, is judging a story by comparing it to other stories within the scope of the very specific genre only. So my story would be compared against only other LnC fanfic stories. In such a case, low scores like mine would indicate a failure to provide a story that amply fits into the genre.
Problem here is that unless we are shown examples of stories that receive even average rankings (because after this showing, I'll be lucky to ever reach "average"), we have no idea of what constitutes outstanding. Yes, we've been told who the winners are. But did those winners have scores much closer to the 600 point maximum than I did? How am I to know what story would receive a 600 pt. award - something I would aspire to - if I don't know the scores of the winning stories? There is no bar for me to reach for, per se.
I would be interested to know under which method the Merriweather judges operate. If my work is being compared to Shakespeare, I have a lot to live up to.
Lynn
