Rebecca Lloyd's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-competitions"
MAKING WRITING COMPETITIONS FAIR
I have recently come across a short story competition in which the contributors were asked to put all their details in the footer of their submitted stories, I couldn't find the organisers, so I wrote to some people who probably do know who they are and said the following:-
I can't find out who might be organising the XXX Short Story compo, but if you know, I wonder if you could suggest that the name of the writer is not put in the footer of the story, rather each writer gets a number, and that number is put on the ms, and then later matched with the name. Otherwise, suppose a well known writer entered a story, I would defy anyone not to react to the name in the footer and be affected in their judgement of the work. The other issue is that if the situation is left as it is, I believe you may have many inexperienced short story writers, but those of us who are published and experienced in the form would certainly not participate. I mean this in the kindliest way, but it is such a fundamental error not to ensure all is anonymous.'
I hope they take it to heart, it's even worse in my opinion than my other bugbear around this issue which is that competitions that run annually sometimes keep the same people to do the judging and don't even have a guest judge on their panel. This means that, gradually over time the stories that win the particular compo. will become more and more like each other, and how can that be good?
I can't find out who might be organising the XXX Short Story compo, but if you know, I wonder if you could suggest that the name of the writer is not put in the footer of the story, rather each writer gets a number, and that number is put on the ms, and then later matched with the name. Otherwise, suppose a well known writer entered a story, I would defy anyone not to react to the name in the footer and be affected in their judgement of the work. The other issue is that if the situation is left as it is, I believe you may have many inexperienced short story writers, but those of us who are published and experienced in the form would certainly not participate. I mean this in the kindliest way, but it is such a fundamental error not to ensure all is anonymous.'
I hope they take it to heart, it's even worse in my opinion than my other bugbear around this issue which is that competitions that run annually sometimes keep the same people to do the judging and don't even have a guest judge on their panel. This means that, gradually over time the stories that win the particular compo. will become more and more like each other, and how can that be good?
