Fairy Night Awards || CLOSED

JUDGING CRITERIA

In order of importance:

1) Characters (10)

2) Plot (10)

3) Pacing (10)

4) Creativity (10)

5) Dialogue (10)

6) Worldbuilding (10)

7) Grammar/Spelling (10)

8) Description (10)

9) Themes and Emotions (10)

10) Title/blurb/cover (10)

Total: 100

Explanations:

- Characters are self-explanatory. For me, characters are my favorite part of a story and I can forgive things like poor grammar or some plot holes if the characters are very good.

- Plot is also self-explanatory. I'll be looking for plot holes and stuff like that.

- Pacing deals with the rate at which you tell your story. It doesn't matter if you have fast or slow pacing, it matters if the pacing is right for the story and makes sense, so if you're someone who has slow pacing, don't worry, I'm not one of those judges who thinks slow pacing = bad. It's more about how you executed the pacing than how fast or slow it is.

- Creativity refers to how you present the story. It doesn't matter if your story has cliches in it as long as they are handled well. I'm of the opinion that cliches are not bad unless they're executed poorly. I think some of the best stories take cliches and adds to them. The "creativity" I am looking for is creativity in execution, word choice, and sentence structure. So, for example, if you have repetitive word choice, that will be something I deduct points for.

- Dialogue is self-explanatory. I will judge based on how you format and execute your dialogue.

- Every story needs some form of worldbuilding. You don't need to be a sci-fi/fantasy writer to write a good world. Even if your story takes place in New York City, it's about how you make the world part of the story. Does the setting matter, or is it just kinda... there? That's what I'm looking for.

- Grammar and spelling are self-explanatory. It's lower on the list than you may think because I believe grammar and spelling doesn't make a story, the story makes a story. I've read stories with meh grammar that were fantastic and some really mediocre stories with fantastic grammar. So while spelling and grammar are important, you still have a chance to win if your grammar/spelling isn't great.

- Description is different from creativity in the sense that I will be judging how well you describe characters, environments, items, etc. Do you overdo it with the description? Underdo it? That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

- Themes and emotions I think are also pretty self-explanatory. Are there themes and emotions present in your story? Are the emotions flat or dynamic? Are the themes interesting?

- I'm not very picky about titles, blurbs, and covers, so that's why they're at the bottom. I combined all three of them and made them only 10 points. I understand not everyone has the means to make covers or submit to cover shops (as I've discovered, it's harder to submit to cover shops than one would think), hence why I don't judge too strictly on them. I still think they're important to a story, but far from the most important thing.

There is no criteria for mini categories since they are meant to be judged quickly, hence the word "mini." However, once you see the mini categories, you'll see the criteria is pretty self-explanatory anyway (like best cover... I'm obviously going to be judging your cover-).

If you have any questions, leave them here.