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devontae View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote devontae Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2021 at 6:26am
This was my first time writing for this contest and based on the response, it is likely to be my last.
I have an issue with how my group was scored and posted a discussion about it.
To add to your discussion, I have several thoughts. Based on prior information on here, it seems that the overall number of entrants has increased exponentially over the years.
Someone posted about the total entrants being in the 3-4000 range only a couple years ago. 
It was over 6000 this year. Let’s extrapolate a little, total speculation of course:
Let’s say you’re a judge and given a group to complete. 
The average judge has a day job so they can only work at night/weekends. 
You have to read through 28, 2500-word stories. That’s a 70,000 word novel with 28 chapters that must thoroughly dissected. 
If it takes an average person 2-5 days to read such a novel it will be longer here because of they have to dissect it. Let’s say a week for that. 
Then they have to critique it, picking out good elements and bad elements. Each story has a write up with things they liked and didnt. 
Let’s say another week for that. 

Based on this, an average judge can churn out a group in 2 weeks. With a 2 month timeframe our judge can complete 4 groups total. 
Then there are 3 judges required per group. 
With 218 total groups, this would mean there are 165 judges if everyone is working at maximum capacity, which isn’t likely unless they are being paid, not sure of that. 
I would wager that the judges aren’t likely to continue this every year. 
Especially the SSC with the longest stories. It sounds much easier to be a judge on the Flash Fiction though. 
With 5 total contests, that’s a lot of judge spots to have to fill every year. 

My assumption is that unless they are being paid very well, this setup would have a lot of churn or turnover. 
This would require a lot of recruitment. They could perpetually take out ads on indeed or other various gig sites. 
I could see this in a pinch but it would be pretty unpredictable for the long term. 
A big problem, when you have a constant slew of events all year long. 
A possibility is that they are looking to local colleges and signing up MFA and BFA English majors. 
This would be a huge vat of candidates eager to gain experience. 

I’m not trying to stereotype, but one thought I had, if the above is true, is that certain types of stories
may not be overly appealing to folks of a certain age/experience bracket. 
Someone who’s just been weaned on 6 years of quirky, boundary-pushing, emotion-driven literary fiction might frown on traditional character/plot-driven genre types. 
This would align with the comment someone made on my earlier post that the judges are tending to favor boundary pushing, cross genre pieces.  
This irks me because I take issue with forcing people into specific genre groups and then rewarding folks who then disregard the tenets of that genre. What's the point? 
Someone whos forte is Drama, can easily adapt any genre setting into a Drama by focusing solely on 
character development, emotions, and relationships. If you were trying to get someone to write outside their comfort zone, then make sure they do that.

One story in my group, which made the top 5, didn’t really follow the genre guidelines in my opinion and is quirky enough that it could’ve been written by Zooey Deschanel. 
Based on what I’ve seen so far, I would wager if Agatha Christie or JRR Tolkien entered this contest, they wouldn’t even get an honorable mention. 
It is interesting to note that in the contest rules it states that an updated list of the judges is kept on the site and contestants are encourage to check it.  
Yet I could find no such list anywhere on the site. I think we deserve to know who’s grading us and their background. 




Edited by devontae - 09 Apr 2021 at 10:13am
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taaaylor View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (2) Thanks(2)   Quote taaaylor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Apr 2021 at 12:38am
Originally posted by devontae devontae wrote:

I’m not trying to stereotype, but one thought I had, if the above is true, is that certain types of stories
may not be overly appealing to folks of a certain age/experience bracket. 
Someone who’s just been weaned on 6 years of quirky, boundary-pushing, emotion-driven literary fiction might frown on traditional character/plot-driven genre types. 
This would align with the comment someone made on my earlier post that the judges are tending to favor boundary pushing, cross genre pieces.  
This irks me because I take issue with forcing people into specific genre groups and then rewarding folks who then disregard the tenets of that genre. What's the point? 


Lol, if you stick around the contest for a bit longer, you'll see that it can be a risk to go too literary. I've absolutely gotten burned writing stories that don't work well with a quick skim-read. As for the cross-genre thing, I think success with that is, in part, the result of writing something distinctive from the group. This contest, like anything that entails judging writing, requires some degree of considering your audience. It's up to you as a competitor to decide if you want to shape your writing to that and how to do so.

Also, I don't believe crossing genres means ignoring the tenets of the original genre. If I can tell a better political satire from a sci-fi framework, why wouldn't I do that? Plus, I think those genre-crossing stories tend to perform slightly better because often writers are pulling from a genre they're more comfortable in to support one outside of their experience.

I think you could have gotten your point across without deriding one of your groupmates. :/ I don't think you'd want to read them talking about your work that way. Let's be courteous here.

ETA: By the way, here's that judge list you mentioned you couldn't find: http://www.nycmidnight.com/Competitions/SSC/Judges.htm



Edited by taaaylor - 10 Apr 2021 at 12:43am
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jennifer.quail View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote jennifer.quail Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Apr 2021 at 10:07am
Originally posted by devontae devontae wrote:

This was my first time writing for this contest and based on the response, it is likely to be my last.
I have an issue with how my group was scored and posted a discussion about it.
To add to your discussion, I have several thoughts. Based on prior information on here, it seems that the overall number of entrants has increased exponentially over the years.
Someone posted about the total entrants being in the 3-4000 range only a couple years ago. 
It was over 6000 this year. Let’s extrapolate a little, total speculation of course:
Let’s say you’re a judge and given a group to complete. 
The average judge has a day job so they can only work at night/weekends. 
You have to read through 28, 2500-word stories. That’s a 70,000 word novel with 28 chapters that must thoroughly dissected. 

First, yes, the judges are paid by the piece. So they are getting money for it.

Second, while yes, they technically have to read through an entire story, they almost certainly aren't doing intense analysis on every single one. Because, if  this contest didn't require they give feedback, or if this were a submission call for a magazine, there's a sizable minority of stories where they'd read the first couple paragraphs and bin it without reading further, because it's not necessary. In those cases? They're not getting paid to provide a mini-course in creative writing, and actually fixing everything would take more feedback than they likely have time to give. So they're not taking a long leisurely read, they're reading quickly and in most cases probably saving time for the top choices and the ones on the bubble. (Plus 70,000 words is just a longish YA novel length in three months. It's not exactly being asked to read Ulysses in a week.) 
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