Fiction Challenge Judging

If I don’t think about the task at hand, I become very impatient and usually dissatisfied with the eventual results. But once I broke down the numbers, it became apparent that judging a Vocal Fiction Challenge is a daunting task.

Let’s take the Barn Owl challenge as an example.

There are 3066 entries. According to Vocal, the first step is that each entry gets read twice. The average person reads around 250 words a minute. In broad strokes, let’s say it takes 10 minutes to read each entry, which works out to around 1000 hours to read through the first step. Remember each story is read twice in the first step. (3066 * 2 * 10 minutes divided by 60 minutes in an hour = 1022 hours)

Thirty percent of the stories get passed to step two, or around 1000 stories. This adds another 167 hours of reading time. This leaves them with a shortlist of stories for the final decision. So I think it’s fair to say the entire process would be around 1200 hours. And in 1200 hours, the best you can really expect is a cursory look.

We should also consider that to judge these contests. Ideally, the person would have some literary background, not just scanning stories to see if they meet community standards. I have no doubt that some of them do and are quite good at it. So, most likely, the final decision-makers are very skilled. But the gatekeepers? Maybe.

Add to that the fact they are running several contests at once. Plus, they have their regular community standard reviews. All of this takes resources. This is supported by the ever-increasing time to get a story approved.

This is the challenge (pun intended) being faced. An enormous task, a staff that is being pushed to the limits, and little to no transparency for the contestants.

Vocal is the only major game in town, so most Vocal+ members will grumble a little and go on paying their $10 a month. But why not strive to improve the process? Vocal has a good thing going here. They tapped into thousands of people who wanted to write and look at the contest as a way of gaining validation.

Many people say they used to write in school but stopped until they stumbled upon Vocal. Or that they have been writing for years but had no outlet to share it. Whatever the drawbacks, there is a good thing going on here. Let the members help improve it.

Some suggestions:

A scoring system needs to be developed. Yes, there will still be a lot of subjective decisions made, but it will provide a framework. It will also prove to be a powerful tool to manage a large number of entries. I find it hard to believe you can do it without one. Maybe one is already in place. If so, Vocal needs to share how it works.

Limit the number of times a person can enter a contest. I say this as someone who submits a lot of entries to the contest. For example, I submitted eight to the Barn Owl contest. Now I know some of them are weak, but I wrote them. They did not work out how I wanted, but I submitted them because it was a better option than not submitting them. I think one would be too limiting, but why not allow only three? This would provide your first level of filtering, the writer deciding which ones are his best. Others may disagree with this suggestion, but if it means freeing up resources so a more comprehensive judging process can take place, I think it would be a win for both sides.

Crowdsource some of the work. Find a system to spotlight the entries and encourage people to read and vote on which ones they feel are best. Of course, this would not be the final decision, but it may highlight good ones that got overlooked in the sorting process.

Form a writer advisory panel. Have a monthly meeting between Vocal and the panel members. There are plenty of Facebook groups and people already providing leadership within the Vocal community. Give them an official voice.

More transparency into the process. Let us see what is happening each step of the way.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

I am going to place this on both Medium and Vocal. Medium because it will post immediately.