'Through The Keyhole' Story Challenge' 2012

I have to agree with Sebastion, there are a number of stories that deserve a '10' and that number I would think is 94 in total.

Whether one comes in at #1 or #94 does not matter, what is important is that we have great fun, and yes the jokes are funny (despite my regular comments on welcoming new writers on site). And in case your reading this NJrick, I believe I will beat you out of the last spot this time...LOL.

Cheers to each and every writer and hooray to all the readers and comment givers and voters!

I know I cringe when i read a story of mine and know the mistakes I made and without the validators to help out....well I just have to laugh because it is sure too late now....LOL. This challenge has made me and I think many others appreciate all the hard working validators among us, along with Pink and Flopsy who work at making sure the stories are correct not only in the grammar but in many other ways as well.

To every writer who submitted a story I say thank you and wish you the best of luck! And to the Library Admin crew who lets us have these challenges I say thanks to you as well.

CS

The problem with this contest is that every story was excellent and it was a question of who was a little better. In past contests, my voting of 7 or 8 would have been a 10. I couldn't judge all contested stories equal since there would be no voting. The truth is that there is no real winners and losers. Forget about that. All were really winners. No such thing as a loser. Certainly not in this contest. I had to judge some stories based on my own preference on what I "really liked" with regard to my own prurient interest. I generally don't like to vote with my own personal interest. Even if it doesn't turn me on, still, I would considered the story as excellent, due to content, description and all around plot with good character development. I still do but I still have to vote some a little higher than others. That is why there are no real winners or losers. I personally don't care who won. It is too subjective.

I agree. Even if the story is not of my preference, I would still give the professionalism of the writing at least a 7. I just believe taking the time to write one, the authors deserve at least that much.

I agree that marking ought to take into account the skill of the writing as well as whether the story hit your own personal button. F/M doesn't at all turn me on, but a F/M story with vivid writing, well-judged humour and a nice twist in the tail deserves high marks from me. I'd give higher, though, for a story that had all those things, was loyal to the terms of the challenge AND turned me on. Conversely, even if the basic idea of a story appealed to me, if it was badly written or contained definite mistakes of fact or plausibility (I'm not talking here about a schoolgirl who can levitate, say, but about, say, a story set in Jamaica in 1860 in which slavery has not yet been abolished there, or an English undergraduate at Oxford saying he's "majoring" in English, or a wintry December in Australia) then it wouldn't get the highest marks.

I agree that the standard this time is amazingly high - higher than I remember in any other challenge - but just to do my Scrooge thing, I thought of the 94 stories one was not within even the wide terms of the challenge and five were pretty weak (that takes care of my entries). This allowed me to mark from top to bottom, as it were.

We are getting close to 40 000 votes (or points, to be precise) and that seems like a natural target. Perhaps I should go back and turn some fives into sixes and some sixes into sevens....

Alef,

About what we said about 7's for great writing. That surely wasn't to make anyone feel bad. If that's what you'd like to do, I'm sure the authors would be pleased to pieces. That's entirely up to you. Every challenge is tough to come in Win Place or Show since there are so many talented writers here. Just when I think I've done great with an RBI, someone hits a grand slam.

That's an interesting point re scoring the entries. We did briefly consider whether we should come up with a set of criteria to be used when assessing and scoring the entries, but binned the idea off for obvious reasons!

I have to be honest though, where I read stories containing lots of mistakes, I deliberately scored them lower. And the converse is true for some of the beautifully written stories, even if they weren't my preferred orientation.

Anyway, the bottom line is that everyone who made an effort should be congratulated for doing so.

The end of this particular challenge is rapidly approaching. Raise your glasses, folks - the drinks are on Februs

Poor Febs.

My... awfully competitive, aren't we? Yes, I know, the last place trophy is quite desirable.


I'm sure glad that saner (or at least lazier) heads prevailed!


You and Pink should really be more careful not to spill them.

I think this is an interesting question, well worth a discussion, although history has told us that we should not try to invent "rules" on how people should treat the challenges.

Personally, I try to use mainly literary criteria when I vote — I try to disregard my own sexual predilections and vote for the stories that have the best and most original plots, the most convincing characters, the best descriptions etc. I have to admit, however, that my preferences have a tendency to sneak in the backdoor; I have certain ideas of what "belongs" in a spanking story and what does not, and I have a suspicion they influence my voting more than I usually think. Just to take one example: I am not very keen on explicit descriptions of genitalia and whenever that occurs I have a tendency to give the story fewer points; the official, "literary" reason being that it slows the story down and blurs it's focus, the real reason being that it is not really "my thing"! On the other hand, I find it hard not to give a fair number of points to stories that really turn me on no matter how they are written!