[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.).

[Nate Hunter]

Well, can I at least assume the 37 views are showing we have interest in the contest?

Review team, I'd be honored if you would join me for another month of AOTM judging with the August contest, but if, for whatever reason, you'd rather not, go ahead and let me know. If all five of us stay, though, we can still choose to enter since we can get 4 scores per story. To me having four scores per entry is the basis, and the lowest (Judge total lowest, not individual scores lowest) will get dropped on any stories with five. if there are also entries from judges. In this way we aren't eliminating anybody from being able to join.

[DragonMasterX]

I'm in, I shall review once again, this time for the August Contest, I'd be more than happy to do so.

[Crimson Fox]

This sounds good, I'd love to enter another contest.

[Nate Hunter]

Well I know I may not be the best, but I am planning to enter the August contest if we have the five judges again. So we are rivals if that happens, Crimson Fox! But Don't expect me to be harsh on you because of that. After all, I can't judge my own story -- that would be cheating.

[Herr Mullen]

I think I'd actually like to entr, as well. This puts up something quite difficult, doesn't it?

Maybe we can draft some other people, as well.

[Marine]

I'd love to judge again. I'm going to enter in the contest also.

[DragonMasterX]

Heh, I think I might as well give it a try, I'll enter the contest with one of my newest stories.

And I'm also asking authors I know if they want to enter, for know, I'm getting a single yes out of only one I have asked :P

Hmm... how would it be then if judges entered the contest? All the others except that one would judge the story?

[Nate Hunter]

What will happen if we have five judges is that everyone will judge non-judge entries, but the lowest score will be dropped. Everyone except the judge who entered will review their own entries. This way no story has an edge because it got more reviews (yes, I go to percentages, but more reviews means a more distorted average).

For an example, the judges are:

Knight of the New Moon
Nate Hunter
Herr Mullen
DragonMasterX
Marine

Of these, all but Knight enter (he'll read, but he's not confident in his skills for writing lemons). We also receive entries from, random examples here:

Wisemon
Circeus
Mister Big T
DV85

What happens is that I send on all the entries from the four non-judges to all four of the judges. I also send the three judge entries they didn't write to each of them in turn. Knight, who didn't enter, receives all eight entries for judging, and most likely his score will stay on all of them, since he reviewed all of them. Aside from his, it is likely the lowest score of the other judges that will be removed from each of the other four entries. This is only because Knight has access to all eight for (relatively) objectively comparative purposes. If all the judges entered, then it would be the lowest regardless of who gave it.

It's just an example, though, and if we have six judges, we could say one is there just for grading Judge entries, and he would be, by default, prohibited from entering.

[DragonMasterX]

Right, so, when should we be sending the stories? Since we are almost at the end of July, I'm rather curious already.