|| FULL & JUDGING || Looking for a fun but quick contest experience? Look no further than the Birthday Bash Mini Awards. Posted on July 9th to celebrate the host's, Raven's, birthday, this birthday bash has a lot of categories, but not many slots in...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Since this is a mini awards, the criteria will be minimal, and there will be multiple criteria that depends on the category. For example, there will be different criteria for poetry than regular novels.
I will put the criteria below each category. Some will be different, others the same.
For transparency purposes, I will talk about my judging process here. There are a variety of categories, but in the general categories judging books normally, I will read & judge around 4 hours of your work. If you submit anything under 4 hours, it will be fully read. If you submit something slightly over four hours (like four and a half), I will likely read the entire thing since it's close enough. But if it's like ten hours, I will stick to the four hours.
I do this because it's a mini awards, and I also have other ongoing awards I need to get results out for. I want to read enough that the plot is developed (since I know sometimes people need quite a few chapters to find their footing), but also not so much that it takes me twenty years just to get results out.
I don't go by chapters but rather hours of reading since if I make it "I'll only read ten chapters," one person might have 5-minute chapters and the other might have 20-minute chapters, so that's a giant gap. A flat four hour rate ensures everyone gets the same amount of read time, thus making it more fair, in my opinion.
Also, please check my WHO Mini Awards "Clarifying My Scale" chapter to see how I rate things out of ten, as a 7/10 for me might be far different than what you personally view a 7/10 as.
I will explain each area of the criteria when the categories are being judged, but to let you know in advance, SPAG stands for spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and that is an acronym you will be seeing a lot.
*Please note that you are automatically entered into the grand prize winner competition since that winner will be my favorite overall book from this entire contest. This only doesn't apply to the aesthetics categories like blurb, cover, and aesthetics.
Categories:
1) Best Blurb
- Five slots. This is a blurb-only category that will judge how clean the writing is and how it appeals to readers.
TIPS BEFORE SUBMITTING: Grammar check your blurb. I have hosted many best blurb categories, and I cannot tell you how many times people lost because they had grammar errors. Use Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and/or QuillBot to check yourself. Grammar is judged most strictly in this category since it is imperative to have clean writing in a blurb. Do not submit a blurb that is purple prose (a term in literary criticism that refers to language that is too flowery or over-the-top) because you will not score well. I don't believe blurbs should be purple prose. That's just my personal take, so if you think differently, that's cool, but you won't change my opinion, so please do not submit if you have a very flowery blurb.
