Contest Issues - Judging and Results

The latest round of RITA nominations were announced last week and once again, there is a firestorm of comments and opinions on the results. I want to take the time to talk about this today, but look at it from two levels. The first being how the contest is run and judged, and then focus on how authors are responding to the results. Please note, this is an issue I have been focused on for several years now, including offering my support to RWA to guide this process.

I am someone who does believe in contests such as the Golden Heart and the RITA. I think it is important to recognize the best of the best in our profession. Those people who have one either of these awards have had great pride in the work that they have done. However, one of the biggest issues I have had with this contest is the way that these are judged.

The lack of a clear judging rubric and only asking preliminary judges if "they like it" is not an objective way of looking at a book. If you send, for example, an erotica novel to someone who only writes inspirational romance, the odds are, that person will not get a great score. This is simply not fair.

Contests like this need to have rubrics that focus on character, setting, and plot development. Rubrics should examine the quality of the writing and not focus on a subjective call.

There is another level to this that honestly falls on the shoulders of the judges. When the authors are being "subjective" and looking at other things, beyond an objective criteria, they are not giving authors a fair critique. Consider the following:

• Not reading an entire novel.
• Making a judgement call because they are reading an author they already love and score it higher.
• Giving a score a positive or a negative ranking because it contains traits they find politically driven such as:
• Racial issues
• Gender issues
• Current social or political issues
• Giving a score a positive or a negative ranking because it is self-published, independently published or published by a company they like or do not like.

I know if you ask judges directly, they will say they have not done this, but I have over-heard many authors at contests talk about how they do this. Behavior like this is something that just taints the contest.

Now, let's look at the other side of the coin. If someone does not get into the final rounds, that person cannot just create political drama about how he or she was "excluded" or "not given fair treatment." While this may indeed be the case, authors have to also consider that maybe their writing simply was not that good. For example, if an author creates and African American Female Detective and does not get into the finals, this does not mean that it is being excluded BECAUSE of these issues. It simply means it did not get high enough scores.

I know that it seems like there are a lot of variables to this, and I will fully agree with that. There are a lot of variables, and this is due to not having CLEAR rubrics and criteria to judge the novels. The lack of that criteria truly does allow judges to do what ever they want to do with the scores. But we also have to remember that not being recognized in the finals IS NOT a political or social statement about you personally.

Again, I am offering my support to the RWA Board to create clear guidelines for judging. I am also encouraging authors to quit the complaining and commend those that did get recognized. Doing so might bring that respect back to the romance genre and to the organization we are all part of.