Secrets and Lies Story Challenge 2013

Done! 66/66, Average 5.15 (In keeping with a central theme of spanking fiction, I try to grade "strictly but fairly".)

I believe the "Secrets and Lies" theme pushed many of the story plots (including my entry) towards the conventional, but still a few of you managed to break out into some amazingly creative territory.

For some reason, most of the stories in this batch are fairly compact. That really helps us readers!

Guy

I prefer "arbitrary and capricious" myself, qualities that underpin the Marlowe Grading System ("MGS"). The goal of the MGS is to create as much separation as possible between the scores of the best stories and those that are merely average. As I ponder whether or not to read the last few terribly long stories, my average stands at 3.34.

This is my first time reading and voting on challenge entries and the first time I have submitted one of my own. I am a third of the way through. Some I thought were good, some average, some ugly. But I am getting through them and even leaving a few comments here and there. I guess I am an old softie as my average is a little over 6

You should, they are amongst the best in the challenge in my opinion (and no, they're not mine!)

Given we didn't set a maximum word count for the challenge, people can write whatever length they like.

Kudos to those who wrote the longer ones - they must realise that they are taking a bit of a risk as some people might be put off by the longer length & won't read them properly. However, there's still plenty of time left for reading and voting, so it is do-able.

Anyway, the spirit of the challenge isn't about winning, it's about being creative and writing more to fill the virtual shelves of the LSF for sharing freely with others. So thanks everyone for participating.

PS.

You old meanie!

That makes me a real softie @ 6.33! A few stories I wanted to give over 10 points having scored earlier ones and didn't want to have to go back and change. There were 4/5 that were magic!!

I have to confess I do mark down the ones that are sloppily written or dull. But what is dull to me maybe wildly exciting to someone else, so that's fair enough.

Hm. Then maybe i will. We'll see. If only because you said "amongst."


It's mean to try to push the best stories to win? The I guess "nice" is giving everyone a "10." When you think about it, though, giving everyone a "10" is the same as giving everyone a "1."

My average score was 5.68. I tried to grade on a curve with the best stories receiving a 10 even if they could theoretically have been even better. But there were a good number of stories that deserved high scores and it was hard to separate them. There were even a couple of others I considered almost as good as my own!
I did go back and lower some scores to try to make room for a little more spread at the high end to separate the good from the great. I don't think it matters whether we are generous or strict as long as we try to be consistent and use the same criteria for every story. I know I wasn't totally successful at that. My scores were subjective and some I scored higher just because I liked them for a reason I couldn't put my finger on.

As I mentioned during past challeges I read for entertainment and have little interest in being a literary critic. Therefore I scan all the stories and only read those that satisfy my particular kinky tastes. As a result out of 66 stories I only rated 17 but my average rating is 7.76 which reflects the fact that I'm only reading those that I like.

Not finished yet, but I use my own C.S.R system, which allows me to basically do anything I feel like at the moment. I find that system is best for me. The really good thing about my C.S.R system is that it always rate my entry on the high side whether it deserves it or not..LOL

I usually rank on how the story made me feel, rather then worrying about a few grammar errors or spelling mistakes, as I know my own regular stories without the validation's work would reflect such things. If the story makes me feel good I rank higher then if I come away having to read parts of the story several times to understand it. If I am in a grumpy mood when I start reading and then change to a good mood over the time I am reading, the later stories get a better score, but that is the C.S.R system.

So far my average is 6.9 so you can see I am a overall generous with my ratings. I believe if I am generous then perhaps others will be generous when they rate my entry. This has never worked before on previous Challenges but I am still hopeful things will get better in the future.

The stories are interesting reading and I think I have only guessed one author correctly so far out of the 50+ stories I have read. Still having fun which is my purpose on site so the Challenge is great.

CS