Diva Judges

One of the ways a new writer gets anonymous feedback is through writing contests. Some contests are better than others, some judges better than others. For the most part, everyone running and judging these contests want to give the writers a productive experience and helpful feedback.

Unfortunately, every once in a while, the writer gets a diva judge. If you've been in a contest, you know the type. I'm-the-queen-of-the-universe-and-I-know-all-the-writing-rules-and-wrath-to-the-plebe-that-questions-me!

I've talked about some of the judges I had in the past. The lady who lectured me that constables do not exist in the U.S. The three judges in the same contest who told me I needed to do my legal research while I was still a practicing attorney in the field I referred to in the manuscript.

And those are mild compared to a friend who was told by a judge that she sucked and that she needed to give up writing and find another hobby. (And believe me, I wish I was paraphrasing.) Ironically that very same manuscript finaled in several other contests and had a zillion partial and full requests from agents and editors.

In the most recent contest I judged, I gave an entrant a very low score on one section of the judging criteria. The writer was accomplished on all the other criteria,  and I'd given her high scores. But this one thing was not working for the story she seemed to be telling.

Then later that night, I lay in bed, wide awake, thinking about that score. Had I become a diva judge? Was I letting my ego get in the way?

The next morning I looked over the entry again. Nope, I still felt the same way about that one criteria. I sent the score sheet back to the contest coordinator with a note about my concerns and asking whether another judge needs to look at this particular manuscript. The coordinator e-mailed back saying I was nicer about the problem than she would have been and that she was letting the score stand as it was.

I found out some time later that I'd given this poor writer her highest overall score.

When I told DH the tale later that night, he said the time I need to worry about being a diva judge was when I didn't question myself about giving someone a low score.

How about y'all? Any judging experiences or contest experience you've learned from? Hated? Loved?

Some Advice from a Contest Judge

I've judged RWA contests for the last four years.  I see writers making the same mistakes over and over again.  And I often wince because I made the same ones.
So how can you increase your chances of getting a high score and subsequently the attention of an agent or editor?  Avoid these five common problems.

1)  Drop the tropes.  They're tropes for a reason; people are writing the same thing over and over.  Figure out a twist to the old trick.  Anne McCaffrey made her dragons the good guys.  Joss Whedon made his blonde cheerleader the one the monsters fear.  Stephenie Myer made her vampires sparkle.

2)  Infuse your story with your voice.  Voice is a reflection of your passion for the tale you're telling.  I can tell when you've committee'd your manuscript to death.  It's got to have a spark of life or it's boring as hell.

3)  Have someone proofread your manuscript before you send it in.  Otherwise, you may have your teen heroine pick up her boobs from the table and head for school.

4)  Watch out for point-of-view problems.  Your POV character cannot know anything that his/her normal five sense or special abilities haven't detected.  EXAMPLE:  The hero saw the bad guy on the other side of the door.  But the door is closed , there's no peephole, and the hero doesn't have x-ray vision.

5)  Read your dialogue aloud, have a friend read it, or download and use a text-to-speech program.  Do the words sound like a real person talking?

Anybody else have some tips they want to offer?