How...How Did THIS Happen? · 2:23pm Jun 5th, 2018
For anyone that hasn't read this tagged story, there are spoilers below the break, so if you have any interest in reading it, go do that first. Now then...
For those of you that read this story, there were mixed reactions. I expected that. The fact that this story doesn't have more downvotes than upvotes kind of surprised me. I did note in the description that it was an entry into the EFNW Iron Author Competition. I also wrote an accompanying blog to give readers more context, but the gist of that was that the story I published had to be pushed up to barely make the 1000-word minimum, and that the raw form of the story was something that I honestly wasn't thrilled about.
Well, I just got the email with the scoring of the story's raw form. Suffice to say, I can't believe what I was told, but not in the way you might be expecting. I clipped the email a bit and added my quick reactions to the reviews I was given (just the written responses), so take a look:
Hello LevelDasher,
Thank you for participating in the 2018 Everfree Northwest Iron Author contest! This email contains your scores and any notes made by reviewing judges for your entry. But first, a quick reminder of the rules and judging methods.
We had 40 stories this year....Reviewers were assigned stories randomly and anonymously. They then scored the story in five categories, on a scale of zero to five in each... Each story was scored by three different reviewers, and the scores were then averaged.
The categories we judged on were:
Technical: This is basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.
Structure: This is the larger scale structure of your story. Typically that means "plot" but might also include things such as the clues and reveal in a mystery, or the setup of a shaggy dog joke.
Impact: Basically, how much impact the story had on the reader. If it was a sad story, how well did it trigger the feels. If it was a mystery, how clever was the reveal.
Theme: How well you implemented the given prompts/themes of this year's contest. The themes this year were: Fire, Palpable, Brooch.
Misc: Pretty much "reviewer's choice" and provides a place for extra credit if something stood out that wasn't covered by the other categories. For example, I bonused a story for a very challening choice of format.
In summary, you can have...a total possible range between 0 and 25. Actual scores in this contest ranged from 5.67 to 23.33 (including many ties.)
Below, you will find your average scores in each category (and your final/total score), as well as three individual reviews. Each individual review is from a single reviewer, and represents the exact score they gave, along with any notes they provided.
Averaged Scores
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Technical: 4.00
Structure: 3.00
Impact: 2.33
Theme: 2.33
Misc: 1.00
Final Score: 12.67Review 1
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Technical: 3
Structure: 3
Impact: 3
Theme: 1
Misc: 1
Total: 11Notes: Poor characterization and very little tie-in to the theme.
(My reaction—Basically, yeah, this doesn't surprise me)
---------------Review 2
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Technical: 5
Structure: 4
Impact: 2
Theme: 2
Misc: 1
Total: 14Notes: ....what?
How did we get from rarity overworking herself to MURDERING all of her friends' pets to make dresses with?! Where did that come from? It makes absolutely no sense! There is no reason provided and no possible reason that could be gleaned from this. It's just "rarity was overworked and went crazy for some reason".
A closing paragraph to explain how she got to that point might have helped, but this is so OOC for rarity, and so completely unexpected it's simply not believable as a story.
(My reaction—most critical of the three)
---------------Review 3
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Technical: 4
Structure: 2
Impact: 2
Theme: 4
Misc: 1
Total: 13Notes: Rarity goes crazy and makes dresses out of her friends' pets. And possibly Spike? I'm not sure.
The big problem with this story is that it seems like it is going to be one kind of comedy story, and instead is another. The humor in the first two parts didn't make me think that the final part would be based around such a dark joke, and while that made it more unexpected, it also confused me as to whether this was supposed to be comedic or not - I think it was, but it sort of ended up landing between dark humor and horror, without actually landing in either.
I think there's potential for comedy here, but I think you need to twist the first two sections to more extreme comedy, or build up towards Rarity's craziness, so we're more prepared for her to do something off the wall in the end - not skinning animals crazy, but at least more extreme, so when you go that extra jump, we are still surprised, but don't feel thrown.
(My reaction—most helpful of the three)
What... WHAT?
When I saw the scoring range in the earlier part of the e-mail, I was totally expecting my story to be the one with the 5.67 score. I mean, I walked out of the competition maybe 20 minutes in. How the fuck did I end up with a 12.67?
Looks like all my technical scores are what bumped me up. Obviously the reviewers I got all scored quite differently. Let's look at just the numbers first:
— The first reviewer was definitely the most critical. They obviously wanted more out of the theme than just dropping those three words in the story somewhere. I guess the random turn to murder had the most impact on them, though.
— Number two...I guess this one makes sense to me. Not to toot my own horn, but my technical writing is usually on the higher side. I AM still kind of surprised the structure category got a 4, though.
— I think the third is the one that makes the most sense to me. High technical score and a 4 for the theme, so obviously this reviewer was more lax about that.
So that's for the numbers alone. I gave my initial reactions to the notes up above, but let me elaborate a bit. It would have been nice to get a little more from reviewer one, but there really wasn't much to work with, so I can't really blame them for that. The third clearly put a lot more thought into it and had plenty of great ideas as to how I could improve on the story, so for that I'm grateful. The second? God, this is my favorite. Aside from giving me the highest total score (though that doesn't really factor into this), just starting with "...What?" made me laugh. That's the kind of reaction I would have expected. This is basically that "Yo, what the fuck was going on in this guy's brain?" reaction that I was actually kind of hoping for when I handed in what I considered a train wreck.
All in all, the fact that I got a score of what is essentially a little over %50 leaves me shocked. I guess there were people in there that just had no idea what or how to write, because I think a 5.67 means they must have gotten two 6's and one 5 (or maybe two 5's and one 7—that's for totals). Yeesh.
Anyway, point is that one or two people asked me how I did in the competition. Welp, there's your answer. I don't know where that places me—for all I know I could be second to last due to a huge gap in the bottom two scores—but that's where this story ended up in its ranking. Huzzah!
Personally, I thought it was a creative twist in exploring the thingRarity's mind could finally break.
I got a score of 10.33, which surprised me as I got a late start and also had computer problems. I hurried through the story and I'm not a great writer to start with, so not receiving the lowest score was a pleasant surprise. The feedback was good and gave me some ideas of what to not do next time I write.
I'm glad you did well. Like I said, I enjoyed the oddness of the plot and thought it was pretty well written.
4876829
Well, thanks! I mean, it really hasn't gotten a huge response compared to my other stories (though it is still one of my newest, so I guess I just need to give it time), but I figured it was worth publishing.
I have a feeling we both got reviewer three if you got good feedback like that. Obviously this person really wants to see people improve and wasn't just telling us what they thought of the stories on the surface.
Are you going to publish yours? If it didn't hit 1000 words like mine, you could put it in a blog post.
4876885
That was my reaction to the third reviewer as well. It was a much more thought response and really did seem like they would like to see more for me, as long as it was a bit better!
I may try to put my story in a post as well. If nothing more than to show how not to write. Lol!
You can take some satisfaction from those sweet technical scores, right? When the results were announced, they said the point spread among the finalists was extremely small. I take that to mean that if your story rubbed just one of the initial three reviewers the wrong way, you were toast. I walked into the competition thinking I needed to go big and bold to rise above the pack, but doing a simple… "safe" story for lack of a better term might've played better. Oh well. I don't regret what I wrote, especially since I'm 7k into the second draft and still far from finished.
4878071
Well, I'm looking forward to reading yours, whether it's a final draft for editing or the ending published piece.
4878189
Maybe both, if the timing works out?
4878243
Perhaps, perhaps. Might depend on whether or not I'm in the hospital (which would actually probably make it more likely).