MERRIWEATHER WINNERS:

The Merriweather Committee is pleased to announce the following winners for the Episode Rewrite category. We congratulate the winners and thank them for writing some excellent fanfiction.

FIRST PLACE: Nan Smith with "Four Days To Nightfall"
SECOND PLACE: Nan Smith with "Pheromone, More Likely"
THIRD PLACE: Lote, with "Affirmation"
HONORABLE MENTION: Marilyn Puett with "Forget It...Not!"

We would also like to thank those who did not win but submitted stories. Even though you, the authors, did not take top prize, the judges enjoyed reading your submissions.

We, the members of the Merriweather Committee and our judges, thank you for your participation and you wonderful imagination in creating terrific fanfiction. We will see you in the spring of 2006 with another round of competition.

Sincerely,

The Merriweather Committee and Judges

Oh! I didn't even realize the Merriweathers were still up and running.

Congrats to the winners!!

Sara

Well done to all the winners!

LabRat

First and second place? Well done, Nan!

And I'm glad to see the Merriweathers still up and kicking, too -- thanks to everybody who put in the hard work to complete another round of awards

PJ

Congratulations, Nan !

I finished 12th (probably out of 12). I am not sure about the merits of some of the judges comments. A lot of the reason I got points taken off my story seems to be a difference in the interpretaion of the characters and whether cannon was the bible as well as they thought I used too much introspection. I am certainly not in the same category of writing as Nan, but I think a lot of the categories were very subjectively judged where if you didn't follow the judges phillosophy on charaterization and introspection, your story was bad.

So it might have been a "judged" contest, but I think the results are equally biased as the Kerths to the judges personal feeings, just with a smaller judging sample size.

Congrats, y'all! I won't say where my story came in, but I do agree with most of the feedback. <G> It was an old story written before I really knew what I was doing, and I've learned better since then.

Some of the stuff the judges mentioned I still struggle with. What can I say? It was nice to get constructive criticism on that old story, and a comfort to obtain it from anonymous sources. There's freedom in the anonymity of both sides. According to the rules, they didn't know what story was mine or even if I submitted one, and I sure don't know who judged it! But the comments I recieved about craft dovetail with what I've learned in writing classes, so I'm happy.

Laura

Congratulations to everyone who participated!!

Well, I have to say I'm somewhat flabbergasted, but pretty happy as well, especially since I have a good idea of the kind of competition my stories were up against. I know only Lote and Marilyn are mentioned here, but I know the kind of writers they are, so that says a lot. It's pretty exciting to know I rank in the same strata as some of the writers whose work I admire.

Thanks for the congratulations, and my sincere thanks to the Merriweather Committee, whoever they are <g> for their hard work on the contest.

Nan

Congratulations Nan, Lote and Marilyn.

I'm not surprised that Nan fills the top two spots. She's a phenomenal writer.

I also sent in a story and placed 6th. The comments were interesting and I was comfortable with them.

Laura U, the difference between the Kerths and the Merriweathers is that we *choose* to submit our stories and we're prepared to accept the results we get. We may or may not agree with the judges, but we were the ones who sent in our stories for judging.

Writing, like any other art, is subjective. But judges go into their job having a set of criteria in their minds as they work through each story.

It was an interesting experience.

I hope that the Merriweathers continue.

gerry

Well done, everyone!

I look forward to the next Merriweather competition!

JD

Congratulations to all the winners! Well done!

veyr very small and stoopid question....

....um....what are the merriweathers?

Not stupid at all, Sileas. You can't be expected to know all the history of the fandom, when you've just arrived.

There have been a lot of discussion threads posted about the subject of the Merriweathers and at least one poll, since their inception back in January of this year, so you could do a search of the Fanfic Related forum, which should produce most of them, if you are especially keen to catch up or interested in the history of this contest.

Basically though, I think this is the first thread that was posted by M-Comm (Merriweather Committee), which sets out the basics of their aims.

LabRat

Congrats to Nan (twice!) and to Lote.

I got my score sheet yesterday and read through the comments. I can't say that I'd argue with a single score. And I did get marked very low in a couple areas so it's not like I got perfect 10's across the board so to speak. Several were 1's and while at first that pinches a bit, when I think it through, those scores were spot on. Like Laura, this was an older piece and I've learned scads since then.

I too appreciate the time they invest in this. I've judged a writing contest before through Romance Writers of America and it IS time consuming. It's often a thankless job so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them publicly.

First of all, congratulations to the winners (major kudos to Nan - way to go!!) and thank you to the M-comm and the judges for their hard work.

I just opened the email with the scoresheet for my story. I had submitted That\'s All It Takes , a story I wrote in the summer of 2004. It ranked 7th, which I consider an honour, given the quality of the writers who participated Also, I'm very happy with my score and the comments I got. Not everything was positive, but I've always liked getting everyone's opinion.

What I found of particular interest was seeing the varied views of the three judges. I'm wondering if the M-comm was aware they all had different tastes? If so, I must commend their choices - appointing judges with different tastes seems to me like the best way to ensure objectivity.

Are we going to share our scoresheets like last time? I don't mind sharing mine.

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Congratulations to the winners! Great choices on the part of the judges.

Artemis
Finally back on internet.
P.S. It's a hard choice between 1 and 2. I'm curious since they seemed equally strong to me - was it the choice of episode that made the difference?

Artemis,

Your post was brought to my attention. You deserve an answer to your question as to why "Four Days To Nightfall" won First Place.

The score was not based on the episode chosen. It was based on the overall scores of the judges.

As the judges carefully read through the story, they assign certain scores to certain categories. The authors are judged on many factors, including: how well their stories capture the reader; pacing; whether the story had a good balance of dialogue versus narrative; and whether punctuation and spelling were correct.

In this case, the judges felt "Four Days To Nightfall" met or exceeded the criteria for each category. "Pheromone, More Likely" received very high marks as well but for whatever reason, the judges believed "Four Days To Nightfall" was a stronger story.

I hope this answers your question.

Sincerely,

The Merriweather Committee