WRITING CONTESTSAre they actually legit?Before you eat me, let em explain where I'm going with this.I know what they (competitions) say, but does EVERY SINGLE entry get read? Or do they just get tossed into a big barrel, drawn out at random, THEN read and if THAT ENTRY is any good, it moves on and they only stop picking out of the barrel when they have their top ten/twenty/fifty?? Do we even stand a chance if that's what they're doing?!? I think not, not if several thousand are in the barrel! It's like a slush pile that we literally pay our last few dollars to be part of willingly!**By the way, I AM speaking of reputable contests - not the seedy, eyebrow raising ones found in the stuck together pages at the back of bus terminal magazines.**And when they say you can submit any number of entries, it makes me even MORE suspicious because a writer could literally flood the barrel with their entries given they had the cash flow (yes, yes, I know, we are generally poor folk but...), thus upping their chances of being drawn and drawn and drawn again...I know that every single writer out there says "I can write better than that!" - hell we wouldn't be writers if we HADN'T said that to ourselves at least once - but I have entered some competitions and didn't even place while the winning entry clearly sucked (again, yes, I know, it's all opinion/subjective but when the winning entry is marred with spelling errors, grammar errors, dangling participles, incomplete/nonexistent plots/characters/settings, and even incoherent language, etc, you begin to really wonder what's going on).Would love some input on this!
I have NO idea.
I know that I read every entry of the writing contests here, but the entries very rarely top 50 . Plus of course, no entry fee.
And when I organized the first Bouchercon anthology, I read every single entry. A couple of other people did too.
And I've run a couple other big-ticket contests, and I read every single entry then too.
It damn near killed me and I swore off doing it again, so you might have a reasonable question here.
Let's tap the hive brain.
If you've judged or been on the team of a place running a contest, can you help us out here?
Do all entries get read?
If you don't want to post under your own name, email me and I'll post your comment anonymously for you.
30 comments:
I may be offering a limited perspective here and can only speak to my experience, but have been involved in several RWA chapter contests. As a judge, you're assigned anywhere from three to ten entries and yes, you not only read every entry but you're also required to give some kind of feedback on each one. I tried to give feedback that was a bit more comprehensive than just writing a quick note at the end of the submission, but that was solely up to the judge.
Yes, it takes a lot of time. No, it wasn't a regular occurance, and yes, I hope I was able to help someone move forward in their journey. I'm not quite sure why anyone would volunteer to help if they weren't going to read the entries, but I imagine it happens. Big disservice there, if you ask me!
It's not helpful to make generalizations. There are always spammers, regardless of professions, ready to take quick bucks from the naive and vulnerable.
If contests require a huge submission fee, that's a red flag. I read through stories of former winners, if they're available. I also look to bloggers or writers or study a local agency to determine if they're reputable.
Last fall, I entered a short story contest that happens quarterly (WOW! Women on Writing). They accept 250 entries. A fee of $10. A panel of judges whittle the entries down to the top 33. The panel whittles it down again to the top 10, who receive gift cards. Then the guest judge, a literary agent, chooses the top 3 who receive cash prizes.
My guess, based on nothing but what makes sense to me, is that one line of (almost) every entry gets read. I think you can learn a lot about someone's writing ability from their first line, and if it doesn't catch the reader's interest it gets tossed. I've wondered if some agents do the same thing with query letters.
OP, speaking from my own experience. I entered a free contest and won entry to a writing class. The writing was amateurish and yet somehow I won. (Maybe, I was the only one who entered.) As to, "I can write better than that!" I have only muttered these words to my own writing. Mostly, when it comes to other books and authors, I utter the phrase, "I wish I had written that."
I have judged one contest and entered several. I definitely read all the entries I was handed (which definitely got painful at times!), and as a contestant I believe my entries were all read. My experience is akin to what nightmusic said; judges are often required to provide feedback as well as scoring. That makes it hard to skip out of the reading responsibility you've volunteered for. Many (most?) judges volunteer, though some contests do pay for judging, which accounts for some of the higher entry fees (though not all; some indeed are scams; legwork is required to verify which ones are valid and worth entering).
I don't have any inside info so can't help there.
One thing I would say is that its worth researching what's done well in past rounds of competitions, or what type of writing the judges enjoy. My own experience is that really ups the chance of success - which does suggest they are reading!
Although I regularly read and lurk on this blog, I felt the need to comment: "Yes, when I judge, I read every entry. It wouldn't be fair not to."
Also, in most instances, I fill out a form with different characteristics that need to be ranked -- which means that my reactions to various aspects from characterization, dialogue, plot, etc. are comparable to any other judges reading the same stories or books. Each time I've judged, I've been amazed how our independent findings are almost identical --- maybe not the same order or identical score for each work --- but the cream rises to the top and the poor pieces are at the bottom.
I have judged three contests. A "best book of the year" style contest (twice) and an anthology.
For the best book of the year contests, at the very least, I read the beginning of each entry. When you have 22 books to read in six weeks on top of your regular life duties, it's difficult to give any novel that contains errors much more than three chances.
In those contests, of the 22 novels from each year, I read 16 of them in their entirety. The other six had me saying no be For the midpoint.
The anthology contest is likely closer to OP's question. They were 500-750 word shorts, and poems, and there were close to 1,000 entries. In this case, I read each entry. Twice.
The reasons for this were two-fold. First, reading them twice was underlined and in bold in the judges' instructions. Second, so many of them were on the fence of being just this close to be considered for acceptance, I needed to make sure I wasn't in a bad mood when I read a piece or simply tired.
In other words, I wanted to give the entrants as much of a chance as possible.
I suppose each judge has their own way of doing things, and moods fluctuate from day to day, but my gut is that most contest entries are legitimately read.
I have read for a nonfiction journal’s annual contest. We would publish the winner and there was an entry fee. Similar concept to the OP, you could enter more than once. One time a person sent in a second draft and paid a second entry fee for it. Other than that I don’t remember any duplicate authors.
We read every submission. We would divide them up between the five of us with overlap, pass our top ten on to each other for a second round of reading and discussion. Then our editor would read the top ones and pass them on to the judges.
I've never judged a writing contest, so I can't speak to the question. I will say that I rarely (if ever) enter contests with a fee. Not because of some grand moral objection, simply that I'd sooner spend the money on a book. :)
Jeanette: My understanding is that agents won't waste their time with a query if it's obvious they're going to pass. If your blurb is badly written, or distasteful, or even just not something the agent feels comfortable representing, more than likely they won't get to the housekeeping at the end, and may not even finish reading the entire blurb. If you put your housekeeping at the beginning and state your novel is 200,000 words of dino-porn, the agent might stop there, no matter how beautifully you executed the following blurb. Which is why you should always put the housekeeping at the end.
Whenever I write a query, I try to imagine the worst-case situation under which the agent is reading. She's late to work, stuck in traffic/on the train, frustrated, and going through the query inbox on her phone to kill some time. You want your query to be that bright spark. That momentary escape. Something that elicits excitement and joyful anticipation.
Jeanette: P.S.: If you read the Query Shark archive, you'll see Janet frequently notes at what point in the query she stops reading. This can be very instructive. It also shows that agents don't always read the whole thing.
I volunteered at one writers' conference that held a contest. Yes, we did have a whittling process. First, if the entry didn't follow the formatting guidelines it was removed (and no the author did not get his/her entry fee back.). Second, the first three pages were read by a committee of 10 writers. Grammar, misspelling, etc were used to further eliminate the submissions but all were read. Finally, an independent, outside judge read the remaining entries and selected the best one. All submitters received some feedback even if just a checked box saying they hadn't followed the submission guidelines.
I have come across a few writing contests that had specific directions they wished their writers to go. Some didn't mention that direction, but the romance writers, sci-fi writers, and Montana Tourism Board all have a direction implied by who they are.
Those groups suck out stuff that doesn't fit, Next they do a basic writing check, then they move on to the story itself. Most do write up a why, though they never show those to the light of day, some can inane and mean that the story itself didn't work. The Turkey City Lexicon grew out of such contests.
From a reader with experience, who prefers to remain Anon:
I've been a judge for a small writing contest in a very specialized field (say, it was sponsored by the National Carkoon Appreciation Society, so all of the entries had to have some relevance/connection to Carkoon). We got about 30-50 in each category (poetry/prose) and all of the judges read all of the entries and assigned them numerical values; the winners were the highest-scoring entries. We had no meeting or interaction between the judges. I don't know whether this is a common way to manage it, however.
The big name poetry or short story prizes (they get 1000+ entries) have filter judges who will whittle down the entries. So yes, someone will read it (I assume they do read the entire story). It's rare that a contest will discuss this. I once asked a big contest, which emphasized that you can re-enter every year because the judge changes, whether they have the same filter judges every year - because if those judges don't like your work and won't put it forward, then it doesn't matter if the named judge changes. Never got a response. Another big contest states upfront that all stories will be read by at least two experienced filter judges, which seems much fairer. I would love to know whether anyone looks through the entries that don't make it through the filter, just to be sure a gem didn't slip through the net. For the most part, though, no one discusses filtering; the emphasis is on the named judge.
Sometimes the named judge will want to read everything on the longlist, but I think it's far more common that they're sent the shortlist. This could be anywhere from 10-60 pieces, based on what I've read.
I think the only guarantee in a writing prize is that, when the results are revealed, there will be a statement about how high the standard of writing was. :)
In short, it's something of a crap shoot and you want to be judicious about where you send your pieces (and cash) to, but if you have a story you've polished until it shines, and it's a legitimate competition, there's no harm in entering.
Hot Button Topic! I entered an unpublished novel contest run by a regional chapter of a prominent national organization. My "feedback" included this comment: "You can't write, and I don't understand why I have to read this." I paid good money for this "feedback."
I have entered other unpublished novel contests for feedback. The comments are more positive: "You're almost there. Watch for word repetitions. You need deep POV here and here. I love your main character. You hooked me in the first paragraph."
I routinely submit short stories to anthologies. There's always a coy "and don't forget to submit an 80 word bio" request which means the stories are sorted by the number and quality of author publications before they're read. I get it. Name brand authors sell anthologies. Newbies do not. That's life in the slush pile.
I know in the RITA (Romance Writers of America) awards, anyone who enters is required to judge the first round (in other categories). Instructions clearly state judges are to read the entire book, although a new rule says if there are numerous errors they can enter a DNF instead of a score and the committee will investigate. (I think if they disagree, they'll reassign the story to another judge). I imagine, though, that some busy judges panic as the deadline approaches and slap on a score based on skimming a few pages. I choose to believe that's a small percentage.
I do not have inside experience, but I wanted to point out that big contests with famous guest judges (i.e. those run by high-profile literary magazines) don’t seem a whole lot different from the regular submissions operations of those magazines, many of which get thousands, or tens of thousands of regular submissions annually. First the “slush pile” is read by volunteer readers, who pass their favorite stories up the food chain to editors. I doubt that anyone in either case can comb as carefully as they’d like for the “gem” that fell through the cracks, for reason of sheer volume, but I do believe that editors (as Janet says all the time about agents) WANT to find the good stuff, so while the odds in the slush pile are long, they are real. Most of these fancy lit-mag contests cost $10-20 to enter, but if you read the fine print, some offer subscriptions or other goodies as a reward for entry! I usually enter one or two of these a year, since I’m getting something out of it, and supporting a journal I like, regardless of whether I win.
I haven't personally judged a contest, but I work in publishing and know a few people who have. These have been generally run by obscure literary magazines and had low entrance fees, but they still got huge numbers of entries and all the entries got read. I believe it's typical for a committee of judges to read the full list of submissions and create a shortlist, which is then reviewed by the full committee.
Of course, it's possible there are less reputable contest runners out there. These lit journals don't make much money so if the contest winners weren't high in quality there wouldn't be much point.
I have judged and entered some contests.
As a judge, I do read the entire entry, agonizing over scores and comments for the writer. Constructive criticism is an art. Concerning punctuation errors, I will place more weight on story rather than grammar. If a writer is a good storyteller, the mistakes can be edited.
As an entrant, my judges have offered valuable ideas to improve my writing, so I know they have read and carefully considered my story. Yes, the best feeling was winning a contest, but all my contest experiences were valuable. The contest fees resulted in feedback well worth the cost. However, do check on the validity of the contests before spending your money.
I've judged competitions and I always read every entry. It means a lot of reading, but it isn't fair to the author if you dismiss the story after a few lines and score them low as a result. I like to hope that any contest I enter will be judged as fairly as the ones I've read for.
Margaret Turkevich: Wow! And Ouch! And sympathy.
I don't enter many contests because my head is full of the world of my epic-length novels. It's hard to yank out of that and produce a short story, at least at this season of life.
I know that conventional wisdom is that you need to turn out gobs of short stories and get them published in magazines and enter them into contests. Guess I'm doing it wrong.
Psychologically, it seems like entering a contest and querying feel very much alike. I guess it's just a matter of how much time and energy you have, and where you want to put it.
My experience has been 50-50.
On the upside:
I've had good fortune with some contests, including right here in the reef. On
On the downside:
I've had a large writer's conference send me an apology that my entry was not read. I was at a Writer's Digest conference where they read first pages. Not exactly a typical contest. On the other hand, it's HUGE feedback if your entry gets read and any of the agents on the panel comment.
Writer's Digest had strict instructions to enter. THREE of the chosen stories to have their first pages read did NOT follow the instructions. Yet they still won. So, all of us who spent time and effort following their directions and didn't have our first pages read got kinda hosed IMHO. That and one other issue soured me enough that I wouldn't attend another one of these so-called conferences.
Another reader who chooses to be Anon
Janet,
I'm one of the short story judges for the 2019 Thriller awards to be given out at ThrillerFest in July, and I can tell you that I read every single damned one of the 240 entries, even the ones that, at 70 pages long, I felt were inappropriate (hello - NOVELLA?!) From talking to the other judges, they do the same, although they are quick to note they don't often read the WHOLE story. If they can tell after a few paragraphs the entry is not going to make it to their top ten list, they move on. I tried doing that, but all except a handful of the stories were so good (I mean, c'mon - they were all published in reputable mags like Hitchcock, Suspense, and Queen) that I usually found myself reading until the end just because I wanted to find out what happened, even if I knew the entry wasn't a contender.
This was my first major contest to judge. Prior to this, I'd only done much smaller ones with 80 entries or less, so I guess you could say this was an eye-opener. I'll never do it again, at least not while juggling a 20-hour-a-week physician day job, the launch of my 3rd book, and struggling to write my fifth book.) That said, I learned so much about short story writing by osmosis that even though it was a huge time-suck, it was worth it - once.
We're under oath not to reveal our identities until after the voting is completed in May. I guess they're concerned about bribery (that said, if any of your woodland creatures want to buy me a lifetime supply of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, send them my way.) I can't wait because I desperately want to contact Art Taylor, who even though we've never met, is now my new short story hero, to talk about his entry. His gave me that Holy shit - what just happened here? Does this mean what I think it means? reaction, which is the best kind.
Because I have to remain anonymous, can you post a comment on your blog saying that in my experience, well-known contests do indeed judge every entry and take that responsibility seriously? That said, there are a plethora of smaller contests which may not. As with everything, buyer beware, especially if there's an entry fee.
Janet - I've spent 20 years researching contests as founder of FundsforWriters. I've served as a judge on 20 or more contests, and FundsforWriters ran an essay contest for nine years. In my weekly newsletter (goes out to 35,000 writers), I post VETTED contests. I firmly believe in contests. The vast majority of them are legit, and it isn't difficult to spot those that are not. I've seen contests catapult careers, provide publishing, and instill a tremendous amount of confidence in writers. I've seen one of my American readers win a $5K contest in Scotland, several others place in Writer's Digest, and many others win many other smaller competitions.
The key is to read the guidelines to the letter, research the judges (or ask who the judges are if they are not posted), note who won the previous years and what they wrote, and understand who is running the contest (the sponsor). It's no different than researching an agent as to who they represent and what their history is before querying. Years back I actually used contests as a barometer as to whether my work had the chops to be considered by an agent or publisher. After winning and placing in several, I started pitching. That was nine novels and two nonfiction books ago.
I hate the timing on this post, because my website crashed today and we're busy cobbling it back together, but FundsforWriters.com posts current contests on a weekly basis. And after acting as judge, vetting contests, and answering so many questions about contests, I wrote a book titled Writing Contest with Hope, and it comes out in three weeks...with 700+ contests in it.
Contests are good for a writer. But like anything else in this and any other business, you do your homework. A good contest can get you published ...introduce you to people...and grow your platform, not to mention what it does to your self-esteem.
Sorry to be long-winded and I promise this isn't a promo, but I feel adamantly about writing contests. They are a solid tool in a writer's toolbox.
I've been following Hope for years, and second everything she says.
Diana Gabaldon judges the Surrey contest each year, with few exceptions. I believe, but don't quote me, they have a panel that short lists a substantial number that go on to the judges, but every story is read. The judges include Diana and Jack Whyte among others, so this is an elite group.
I'm rebuilding my website and I decided to start doing some interviews if I could find people who would speak with me. To that end, I emailed a romance author. She said she would, but was trying to hit deadline, then would be tied up with judging a contest. I know some other romance authors who have judged contests and they always take the job very seriously and read each entry. Odd I hang around so many romantic people when I couldn't write a romantic scene to save my soul.
OP- another quick note, I don’t meant to doibt your ability to discern which contests are reputable, but—winning entries full of spelling and grammar errors? Wouldn’t any reputable contest edit—at least the typos—before publishing? That strikes me as very strange.
Well, this has been very educational.
I've had the opportunity to judge major industry-respected contests in the past. Yes, me and my fellow judges on the panel for the category do read every single entry. I read all the way through every piece as a judge, even if I would have abandoned it long ago as a reader. If I determine a piece isn't a winner, I am very specific in my commentary why it didn't work for me.
I like judging on a panel, for what might not work for one judge, may be brilliant for another, and we work as a team to determine why that is.
I've been involved in the contests for RWAustralia and can say all entries are sent to judges and those judges are asked to read the entire entry. There is some level of trust the judges follow the rules (I know I have always read every entry I've judged and I've been judging for 6 years). The scoresheet they need to complete asks for an explanation of the score - so it would be hard to score without reading the entire entry.
I also make sure I give detailed feedback with examples as I don't think there is much help by just giving a number. I think one of the main reasons to enter a contest is to learn and improve.
I am definitely on the "contests have a place" side of the line.
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