Whoa, girls, chill!
Thanks for all your kind words of support on my post about losing in the "Best Opening Hook" Contest. I appreciated very much the posts left there and the emails. But the truth is I've been totally cool about the whole thing. *vbg* Losing never dampered my spirit, so I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that it bothered me to be a loser. *lol* Like I said before, I'm not into entering writing contests, but when Gina posted reminding the divas about the "Best Opening Hook" Contest, curiosity got the best of me and I entered it just for the fun of it and see what resulted from it. So going over the scores for each entry was a pretty amusing, and most enlightening, experience because it made me realized a few things about these type of contest. Of course, I judged several entries too, so my conclusions come from what I also experienced as a judge. One of the things that called my attention was those whose writing styles might be closer to mine scored me higher than those whose style is different. I know that I could appreciate better those entries "whose voices" were similar to mine because I had a feel of where the story was going and so forth. In other words, I got them. *g* Another thing was I avoided judging any entry that was in a genre I didn't like or wasn't too knowledgeable about. So I avoided like a plague anything that said "historical," "regency," and "contemporary." They way I see it is, if I'm not familiar with the genre, I can't judge it fairly. So now this makes me wonder how many judges were doing the same thing. |
Comments on "Whoa, girls, chill!"
I think you did the right thing. You have to keep in mind who writes like you and can understand where you want to take your story. I like your evaluation of your judged piece. I have to say with something like 15 lines it is too hard to get a GMC out of it. So I'm just happy you entered. I will always enter Romance Divas contests because it prepares you for a thick skin when entering a real contest :P
I actually tend to score manuscripts higher when I'm not familiar with the genre. I think it's to compensate for my lack of knowledge. :-O
Jordan - I noticed I did the same thing in a couple of the historical ones I judged. *lol*
Jax - Thats' right, 15 sentences aren't enough to get a GMC out of them. Sometimes it's something it's spread out through chapter 1.
I only judged the historical entries, since I love those, and a couple of others that caught my eye. I'm not a contest person, either -- I don't like the idea of paying to have the skin flayed from my body -- but I do like the RD contests because I feel like I can trust people to be both honest and considerate. There's a great emphasis there to be professional and that helps.