Through the Keyhole Story Challenge 2012 - Results

I would just like to add my congratulations to the winners and the runners-up, and thank all those who wrote the stories, and also those who took the time to read and comment. I would also like to echo nibra's thanks to 'our wonderful team of administrators who ran it all'. This must have required a huge effort, but it is very much appreciated.

Congratulations to our winners, and to every one else who wrote, read, voted and commented.

I want to thank everyone who commented on my stories. (I will thank you personally, too.)
Such a huge number of comments is even better than winning.
So saying, I must apologize to many who I didn't comment on. Due to the storm here, and time issues, I concentrated on reading and voting for the most part.

I too noticed the big differences in the number of reads, from one story to another. How does one pick one story over the other, which one do I read first, if I can't read them all, where do I start?
Anyway, a most enjoyable contest. Can't wait for the next time to see what inspires whom to write what.

Yes, an excellent competition. As for the variation in number of views, I just looked at my entries and found the number of views varied from 161 to 259! The lowest viewed was pretty short, so it wasn't length that scared people off. The highest viewed had a title which suggested a school setting...

I think the number of views are often an artefact as I normally read shorter stories at once whereas I need more sessions for longer stories resulting in two or three more view-countings.

Congratulations to all the winners! I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of the stories ... so, thank you to all the authors for another delightful diversion!

First, I emphatically agree with the group's collective choice of winners. They are all excellent stories that I had scored highly, and which deserved to win.

Why does one story get more "reads" than another? Just looking at the results, I can't relate it to story length nor order of loading. The difference probably has more to do with choice of title. As I have said before, titles are important too.

The first five winners came from the first 13 stories loaded. It's hard to imagine that's a coincidence. But why? It could simply be that writers tend to go first with their best idea. I know that's true in my case. I felt all along that my first story was the strongest of the three I submitted. The relative number of comments I received on my stories seems to bear that out.

So that logic brings me back to where I started; the best stories won!

I felt that I shouldn't score an entry unless I was able to comment on it. Nothing in the challenge rules said this, it was just my choice. I found that given the time to read and decide on a score for a story, the additional time to make a comment was not huge.

-Don L.

This was my first post here (my story in the challege) and I enjoyed writing it (I also went over by about 200 and some words and had to do a quick and dirty edit as I submitted it on the last day). Since then, some of my earlier stories have been submitted here and I've enjoyed participating.
I read all the stories (barely) and commented on some and voted on all of them and thoroughly enjoyed the process. Congratulations to the winners and all those who participated.

I add my congratulations to the winners. I thought the standard was the highest yet, and it was a real pleasure reading and marking.

I commented on every single one. Every single one deserved it. I feel that comments give us authors the likes and dislikes of many of the readers. Truly a helping hand. I've learned a lot about people's likes and dislikes from being in the library. I've learned a bit more about writing, too.