Laura said:
The thing with vignettes is that they don't have much in the way of plots. <snip> My guess is that scores on a lot of this stuff'll rise when they announce longer story categories.
And Hazel responded:
I agree with your assessment, Laura. But then the question becomes: if these points are not appropriate for the very short stories allowed in this category, why are the entries being judged by such criteria?
I agree, Hazel. I was pretty much wondering the same thing. It almost looks as though a set of criteria for judging each story has been worked out, but the committee has failed to consider that one size fits all won't work for all the story genres they're including in competition.
I'd guess that they might need to consider that and produce a set of criteria that's perhaps a little more flexible and pertinent to vignettes and shorter stories.
I must admit that reading through these posts, when I got to plot, I was wondering how much plot you could fit into a vignette this short. It's no wonder they scored low in that one imo.
Certainly, it doesn't really seem fair to shrug and say, 'Oh well, it'll work out for the longer stories'. I think the authors who submitted vignettes would expect and deserve to have their stories judged fairly on criteria that suits the genre, and an equality in that respect with authors who submit long stories later in the process. It seems only fair, given how much effort they've put in.
But such shakedowns occur when you start something new and I'm sure these teething problems will be sorted out. We've all been there.
LabRat (who's currently working her way through correcting the teething glitches that occurred during the keyword segment of the current Archive project and so has sympathy with anyone trying to work something new
)
