Welcome Letter to Judges

You are recieving this email because you have been added to the Managers' Group.

Thank you for agreeing to be a judge in the "Tales Shown, Not Told Discussion Forum"  Contest.

This is to provide you with information on our expectations for judges.

The Basics of the contest

Each contest has three prompts: a genre prompt, a words prompt, and a character prompt. Contestants pick one of the three prompts and write a story of no less than 1000 words and no more than 3000 words that responds to the selected prompt. Current prompts are on the contest page.

Contestests may opt to respond to all three prompts. This should have no impact on the duties of judges.

There will be a maximum of ten stories in the contest.

Each guest judge will recieve a "Judging" Merit Badge.

What we ask of our judges

Contest managers will check for compliance with contest rules, and for whether the entry responded to the selected prompt. Thus, judges are not required to check for these things. However, contest managers may ask judges for advice on a case-by-case basis.

Each judge will read--but not review--all stories entered in the contest. That's a maximum of ten stories.

Using their best judgement, each judge will select the best three or four stories. We do ask that this list take into account the purpose of the contest, namely to recognize excellence in showing as opposed to telling.

Each judge will rank-order their top three or four stories, starting with the best, and send your rank-ordering to Carol St.Ann and Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈 .

We should receive the above list within FIVE DAYS of the contest close. That gives us time to come to a consensus on contest winners within a week of contest close.

We will assign each judge up to three stories to review.

Your review should be public.
Your review should indicate that you are reviewing as a judge of the contest. You may include the signature {image:2295637} as notice if you wish--see below.
You may send your review anonymously if you wish.
At a minimum, your review should include your general impressions, including things you liked and any possible changes the author might consider.
There is no recommended template, and no "checklist" for your review, although you are free to create one if you wish.
We ask that any reviews of contest entries be held in abeyance and not sent to the author until the final results of the contest are posted to the contest page.
We ask that reviews be sent to the author within a week of contest results being posted.
The contest page includes a resource called Thoughts on craft. Feel free to use this list to help inform your reviews but, again, we do NOT intend this to be a checklist. We recommend general comments, with praise for things done well and suggestions for things the author might consider for improvement.

We will generally have at least three judges: the two contest managers and a guest judge. In our experience, a consensus usually emerges quickly as to selection and ordering of the stories. Absent a consensus, we will invite discussion, via email, among the judges. The contest managers reserve the right to set the final order of the winners.

All proceedings of the judging process, including discussions about final selections, are confidential, and judges agree to not disclose discussions or preliminary rankings.

We will not publicly announce the identiity of judges. If you wish to remain anonymous, send your reviews anonymously--but be sure to indicate that they written by a judge of the contest.

If you have served or are serving as a judge, you may use the following signature in reviews or emails. You may also include it in reviews sent as part of your duties as a judge, thus providing notice that this is an "official" judging review. The writingML is {image:2295637}.



Thank you again for agreeing to be a judge!

Carol and Max