2015 Summer Competition Results
Winners of the Summer 2015 5000 Word Romance Competition (2015-11-10 23:47:40)
Picture shows William Campbell (comp. coordinator), Michael Pearcy, Carol Breuer and winner Lorraine Forrest-Turner.
And the results were:
1st and the SW Summer Competition Trophy: Getting On With Freya by Lorraine Forrest-Turner
2nd: Lost In Translation by Carol Breuer
3rd: Strings Attached by Michael Pearcy
As competition adjudicator, William gave feedback on the entries and the results. There were ten entries. Five were over 4,900 words and the average word count was 4,600. All the rules were adhered to by all the entrants, though there were some requests regarding making a submissio that were not met.
Presentation
This was not up to par for all the entries to some extent, i.e. use of fundamentals of a word processor. All manuscripts threw up typos or misspellings and some were set for US English. Spacing, first line of paragraph indents and time gaps were not consistent. Four of the entrants attempted to guess the authors. With such a low response this part of the competition was abandoned. William pointed out that since it was beyond most of us to remove the author's name from properties in a Word document guessing the author was redundant.
Critiques
William thanked the entrants for submitting their feedback on the other nine entries. He recommended to the authors that they look for recurring themes when reading the feedback on their story.
Ranking
William used a weighted scoring system: first 12 points, second 10 points, third 8 points, then 6,5,4,3,2 and 1. The maximum score was 108 points. The totals were spread across the range from 75 down to the 30s. Seven of the stories had at least one 1st place ranking from the judges. William produced a progressive leader board as the results came in. (Email William if you would like him to send a copy of this.)
Lorraine gets a round of applause after reading her winning entry.
Ranking the Three Winners
Third place was Strings Attached with 67 points; Second was Lost in Translation with 70 points and first with 75 points was Getting on with Freya.
William congratulated the winners and everyone who entered and for writing the critiques for their fellow entrants. The word count, timing of the competition and theme were discussed. Terry thanked William for all the hard work he had done. Lorraine and Carol read their winning stories to much applause. Once more, Terry thanked William and the meeting closed at 9.30.
This report by Sally East.