1000 Words V - Contest Results
1000 Words V was the last story contest that I sponsored at Raven's Lair; it ran from October 1st to November 5th, 2006 and received entries from five people.
Those of you who may be unfamiliar with the contest can go here for details. For the rest of you, let's move on to the results...
The Picture | Grading System | The Stories
Unlike in previous years, I decided to give writers more options for 1000 Words V; rather than having everyone write a story based on a single picture, I featured a single artist and allowed the writers to choose which of that artist's pictures to write a story about. The featured artist was Ursula Vernon of Metal & Magic, one of my favorite fantasy artists. Ms Vernon has a stunning aptitude for portraying both the dark and the comedic, and I enjoyed the opportunity to expose more people to her work.
As always, I judged all of the stories before reading any of the feedback or
replies posted by other readers, so as not to corrupt my own judgments of them
with anyone else's thoughts. What you see in the following text is entirely
my own opinion and analysis.
The stories were judged in five categories, on a letter-grade scale of E through
A (1-5 points, respectively). Scores midway between letter grades were ranked
as a "minus", so, for example, a B-minus was worth 3.5 points. The
categories were then weighted by a multiplier based on how important I thought
that category was to the overall quality of the story.
Spelling/Grammar (x1): This is a measure of the author's skill at the most basic rules of English. Typos, usage of the wrong word or the wrong tense, subject/verb disagreements, and similar errors will result in deductions here.
Technique (x2): This category encompasses the other technical aspects of good writing. Run-on sentences, poor paragraph structure, punctuation errors, and other technical problems not directly related to spelling and grammar will lead to lower marks. An "A" in this category means that the person has effectively mastered the tecnical aspects of writing.
Creativity (x3): This is a measure of how original and interesting the author's ideas were. Important details here include an engaging plot, interesting and well-developed characters, the richness of the story setting, internal consistency in the story elements, and originality (i.e., avoiding clichés).
Artistry (x3): This category evaluates how well the author's ideas were executed. Whereas Technique covers the technical, mechanical aspects of writing, Artistry is about the less tangible factors: Does the story maintain a consistent tone? Does it evoke the emotions it's trying to evoke? Does the technical approach used (e.g., viewpoint character, first- or third-person, present or past tense) work well with author's ideas? Does the story have a clearly-defined beginning, middle, and ending? Is it the right length for the story the author wants to tell, or did it run too short or too long? Most of all, how fun, interesting, thought-provoking, and/or exciting is the story to read? A thousand intangible factors fall into this category. If the story takes place in an established shared story universe, like Tales From the Blind Pig or Metamor Keep, this is also where I will judge the story's consistency with the themes and established guidelines of that story universe.
Applicability (x1): This category is a measure of how well the story fits with the contest image. Ideally, the characters and events depicted in the image should play a major, if not central, role in the plot, and the scene should be described well enough in the story that a person would not need to see the image in order to visualize the event in his or her mind. Obviously the amount of detail given should not be so excessive that it disrupts the flow of the story, but the reader should be able to make sense of what's going on without looking at the picture -- and, for that matter, a person looking at the picture should feel like it is truly relevant to the story, and not just an inconsequential image with only tangential bearing on the plot.
The maximum score a story could achieve was 50 points. Keep in mind that there's some rounding inherent in this system: any letter grade assigned to something implies a range of performance, so someone need not be 100% perfect to get an "A" -- one just needs to hit that nebulous "95% or better" mark. A score of "A" in any category means that the story achieves everything that could be expected of it, and would be worthy of an "A" if I were grading these stories in an academic setting. A "B" indicates something good, but which did not really fulfill its true potential. A "C" indicates average -- not bad, but not really all that remarkable or inspiring. A "D" indicates subpar performance, and an "E" is something that is rife with errors and problems.
Grading systems like this one are always somewhat subjective, and I won't claim that a score received in this year's contest is 100% directly comparable with a score received in a previous contest. I did, however, continue my practice from 1000 Words IV of grading harder on Creativity and Applicability, so grades between IV and V should be somewhat more comparable. That having been said, the submissions were only judged against other entries in this same batch.
Stories are presented as they were received for the contest, without editing, so as to accurately convey the technical skills of the authors. Edited versions of some stories may appear at a later date, if submitted by their authors.
My comments for each story are listed separately on that story's page. Authors' email addresses have been spam-protected.
And now, let's begin the countdown...
5th Place: Black's Worm by Black Velvet
4th Place: Chasing Dreams by Charles Matthias and Michael Bard
3rd Place: Pwn3d by Devin Hallsworth
2nd Place: The Trouble With Magical Things by Michael Brenner
1st Place: Toast Is Good For You by Uri David Akavia
Congratulations to Uri David Akavia, who won a $20 gift certificate to Amazon.com and earned bragging rights as the last champion of the 1000 Words contest series. Thanks again to everyone who participated throughout the years that I ran the contest -- you gave me a lot of hours of enjoyment, and while the contest series sort of fizzled at the end for lack of involvement, it has given me a lot of fond memories.