[AOTM] The August Contest [Updated: FINAL SCORES]

[Nate Hunter]

Here are the guidelines for the August Contest for Author of the month.

Anyone may enter. Judges may NOT review their own work for the contest. The previous winner may not win Author of the Month again, though they may take "first prize" in scores.

--- I want a lot of activity in this contest, and will be asking Wolfe/TMU to post a link to this thread in a sticky on the next update. ---

Submission Guidelines

Free for All - As it implies, anything goes. No restrictions on straight/homosexual, digimon, human, etc. Whatever you want to write you can enter.

Minimum length: 5 pages.
Maximum length: 25 pages.
Standard Measurements: Times New Roman, 12 point. Single-spaced text (no blank line between paragraphs; use the P tag if using HTML), double spaced scenes (one blank line between scenes).

-- In Text or Word format, this means NO blank lines between paragraphs of the same scene, and one blank line between shifts in POV or scene; HTML entries will be forgiven this as long as they are at least 5 pages in a Word Processor

To count as five pages, a certain arbitrary mimum will be judged on the fifth page for length.

All entries must have as their subject line [DAD August Contest], optionally followed by the story title. The body should tell me the Title, Author, and Pairing or Pairings in the story. Please PM me after submitting your story so that I can be sure I've received it... your PM should include your e-mail address and the title of the story for verification reasons, as well as your pen name.

Entries were accepted from August 5 through August 20, and have been sent out to judges on August 21. All entries were be stripped of author identity before being sent to judges, to help prevent bias from the other judges. Entries are no longer open for the August Contest. The September contest guidelines will be posted on the 25th.

Good luck to everybody who joins, and may the competition be fierce.

Grading Criteria

These are the criteria and scores we will be grading with for this contest. I felt rushed last time, but now I managed to dig up my old scoring system, which makes a much easier percentage score in the end:

PLOT (1-20 points)
Plot design, overall creativity, unexpectedness, twists and turns, etc.

CHARACTER (1-20 points)
The ability to capture personality, so they're not all mindless automaton droids.

LEMON (1-20 points)
Need I explain this to you?

QUALITY (1-20 points)
Simply how well it is written, descriptions, lack of overdoing it, etc.

SEMANTICS (1-20 points)
Last but not least, a lemon can be good... if you can understand what the hell they're saying.

This will be our standard scoring in the future, unless we do a themed contest, in which case Lemon will be halved and the other half will be given to a theme-related score (ie: Execution, Romance, etc.).