By Marie-Claude Bourque
Hi everyone,
Welcome to my new series of interview called Contest Wisdom. Let me confess something here. I entered at least 15 RWA contests last year and I have not finaled in a single one. I still think that my American Title entry got mixed up with someone else’s at Dorchester. So RWA contests are a huge mystery to me.
I had much too scared to even consider entering the Golden Heart. Now lucky for me, I am surrounded by RWA contest winners, John, Jenn and Candi.
So, I thought it might be nice if I actually start asking the experts, those who won contests and those who got partial requests, found agents, won Golden Heart and sold their manuscripts because they entered contests.
Don’t we all want to know their tricks?
So who is not perfect for launching this series but Stephie Smith with many contests final and the owner of the best Writing Contests Page out there. If you are entering contest, you need to bookmark this page for a list of all contests including their deadline, requirement and final judges.
Welcome Stephie. I am so happy that you agreed to share your wisdom with me. Before we start, can you please tell us what romance genre you write?
I’m actively writing Regency-set historical romance, though the Georgian period is just as interesting to me. A couple of years ago I started a single title contemporary romance called RULES OF LYING, mostly because I’d been told by several people that I have a chick-lit voice—cynical with a self-deprecating wit. If you read my blog or essays, you know what I mean. ROL finaled in 3 of the 5 contests I entered, but the finals gave me no sense of satisfaction or pride.
Shortly thereafter, I finaled in a contest with my historical romance and I was absolutely elated. I realized right then that my heart belongs to historical romance, and I put the contemporary away, for now at least. The historical romance final hooked me on contests—I wanted that feeling of validation again! I started looking for contests to enter and that’s when I came up with the idea of putting together a Writing Contests page on my website. http://www.StephieSmith.com/contests.html I was gathering the info for myself anyway, so I decided to share it and save other writers some time.
Wow, that is very early success. Can you list your finals for us?
The Masquerade AKA The Masquerading Duke (Regency-set HR) finaled in:
Heart of Louisiana RWA 2007 Labor of Love
Heartland RWA 2008 Show Me The Spark
Connecticut RWA 2008 CONNections
Central Florida RWA 2008 Touch of Magic
Magnolia State RWA 2008 Dixie First
RWA San Diego 2008 Spring Into Romance
Utah RWA 2008 Heart of the West
Top Quarter of RWA 2008 Golden Heart
Rules of Lying (ST contemporary) finaled in:
Georgia RWA 2007 Unpublished Maggie
Romance Writers Ink 2007 Where the Magic Begins
Missouri RWA 2007 Gateway to the Best
You did very well indeed in the contest world. How long have you been writing and how long have you been submitting your work to writing contests?
I started publishing essays in 1999. I started writing romance in 2000 and entered one or two contests, but only spent 3 of the following 8 years writing romance. I didn’t decide until 2007 that I wanted to pursue a career in romance writing, and then I started entering contests again.
What do you consider your most prestigious contest finals and why?
In my opinion, there aren’t any contests that are more prestigious than another. Contest coordinators probably take umbrage at this remark, but I can’t see any reason that one particular contest should be considered more prestigious. Each contestant’s experience comes down to the luck of the draw with judges. Unless a contest can absolutely guarantee the best judges, how can that contest be any better than another? And no one can guarantee that. I had one of my worst experiences with one of the most highly-touted contests. I had zero comments from one judge who gave me mostly 2’s out of 5, and the other judge didn’t know the Regency era from any other, yet took off points for historical errors that she was certain must be errors—but weren’t. One of the errors concerned the word “ton.” She wrote a definition of the word for me (it means two thousand pounds, don’t cha know) and said I should proofread my manuscript before submitting!
A contest can be the best-run, the fairest in judging procedures, or probably any other number of things, but the most prestigious? I don’t think so. Fantastic writers can get bad scores and mediocre writers can final; it all depends on the judges. And even if a contest says they only use trained judges, that doesn’t mean much unless you know that the training is wonderful. I had very poor training from one chapter that has a good contest reputation. I’ve never entered their contest again after getting that training where they had us judge against a set of writing “rules.”
With all these complicated elements, how do you choose to enter a specific contest?
I enter contests which have a discrepancy judge and throw out the lowest score. It doesn’t help much if they give you a discrepancy judge but average the lowest score into the mix. I always seem to get a judge who loves my entry and one who hates it just as much. Without the discrepancy judge, I’d probably never final.
That’s a very good point to consider. What do you think are the advantages of entering contests?
The biggest advantage for me was developing a thicker skin. That’s important because as writers we are always going to be faced with agents, editors and readers who don’t like our writing. We can’t take it personally or we’d never write again.
I agree with you here. What is the best feedback you got from judges?
I entered my historical romance in contests so I could “fix” the beginning. I had written the first three chapters long before I finished the rest of the ms and then changed it many times, trying to improve it. I wasn’t really getting any useful comments about it, and then, in one contest, two published authors said the same thing—that my heroine seemed immature in one scene because the conversation she had with her best friend wasn’t focused. There was too much chit-chat about various subjects. That was the only scene that was original to the first manuscript, and though I’d changed words here and there, I had left most of the scene as originally written. So I rewrote it. Unfortunately, it finaled in 5 contests before I got those comments back, so the final judges all got to read the unfocused scene!
Well, it must have been pretty good if you got 5 finals out of it! What was the less useful feedback you got?
The least useful feedback was that I should change my hero’s problem to one of revenge rather than jealousy. It wasn’t useful because (a) the book was written and the premise of the book is that jealousy destroys, so the hero isn’t the only character with that problem, and (b) I don’t personally care for heroes who are seeking revenge, so I wasn’t about to change my book to one I wouldn’t want to read. But this judge said she didn’t like jealous heroes and that jealousy can’t sustain conflict. As far as her preferences go, they shouldn’t enter into her judging. As for jealousy not sustaining conflict, she hasn’t been in a jealous relationship or she’d know better.
How do you cope with negative feedback or a really low score, if any?
First of all, I try not to run screaming from the room. If I’m going to get anything out of it, I have to read the remarks without getting my back up, and that’s hard to do. Sometimes the negative feedback doesn’t apply because the judge was biased or inexperienced. Those are easy to spot, and if I feel the judge’s bias or lack of experience should be brought to the coordinator’s attention, I do so. But sometimes a judge will mark low, and because of her comments about the reasons she marked low, which might not make sense, you will discount her as inexperienced without reflecting harder. Reflect harder. For instance, a judge might circle every “was” and word ending with “ing” and comment that you’re using passive voice (this seems to be a favorite with judges). Maybe the judge *is* inexperienced since those two things don’t equal passive writing. Or just maybe something else is wrong and the judge doesn’t understand what it is. She knows the scene isn’t working, and she sees those was’s and ing’s and thinks it must be passive voice that’s ruining the scene because she read about that somewhere, so that’s what she says. Maybe the scene really isn’t working, but for some other reason. Reflect harder.
Sometimes, though, a judge is just plain hateful. Those are easy to spot too. The judge doesn’t suggest things, she states them as though there is no other way to view it and she uses lots of exclamation points. “Your hero’s arrogance makes me sick!!” “This set-up is so ridiculous, I’d throw this book across the room!!” “I hate your heroine so much that I not only don’t want her to get the hero, but I wish someone would shoot her and put everyone out of their misery!!!” And yes, I’ve received all these comments. Someone wrote that last one to me about the heroine in ROLJ And guess what? She was right. Too bad her comments were so hatefully presented that I shredded the entry without reading most of them. Two final judges—an editor and an agent—told me the same thing but in a completely different way. Both said they loved my voice and loved the humor but that the heroine came across as unlikable because she was so hard on herself. The editor suggested that I switch from first to third person so that the reader could see the heroine (and her good points) through the eyes of other characters. I didn’t do any more on that ms, but if I do, I’ll take that advice. If the hateful judge had been constructive with her criticism the way the editor and agent were, I could have learned something from her. And that’s what I had paid my good money for.
It’s funny, though. I remember those first couple of contests I entered back in 2000 and how crushed I was by the comments. And how absolutely certain I was that those stupid judges didn’t know what they were talking about. I recently read those again, and guess what? They did know what they were talking about, and their comments weren’t crushing. In fact, one of the judges—Catherine Kean—gave me excellent advice and was very kind about it. I guess the mere fact that she criticized anything, however constructively she did it, was a terrible blow to my ego. That’s why I say that getting a thicker skin is a great advantage to contests.
I know that you also judge some RWA contest. As a judge, what do you look for in an entry?
This is going to be a long answer because I’m going to tell you what I look for and what I don’t look for! I think the most important thing is to read the story and ask myself, Does it work? Does it hook me, does the H/H meeting draw me in, are the first 25 pp intriguing enough to make me want to read more–whatever it is that the contest is judging. If I remain engaged, then I know the entry has something. If, on the other hand, I find myself having to re-read and re-read because I can’t keep my mind on it, or I find myself noticing clumsy wording or something else that takes me out of the story, then there’s a problem.
I’ve mentioned judges who score by a set of “rules” they’ve been taught. I’m not saying those rules aren’t important. They might be. Then again, they might not. I thought the Hearts Through History Romance Writers’ Romance Through The Ages (RTTA) judges’ training document was excellent about getting this point across. It states, “Freeing yourself of a reliance on the ‘rules’ is the first step toward becoming a better judge.” If only every judge would do this.
As an example, some writers are point of view purists, but that doesn’t mean all of us want to read (or write) a book that way. Some writers think there should never be omniscient POV in a book, but many excellent books start out in omniscient POV to set the scene or tone. So when the score sheet question asks, “Is the POV clear?” and “Are transitions smoothly executed?” that’s what the judge should score on. Don’t take off simply because both the hero and heroine had a point of view in the scene or because the author used omniscient POV. Those are author choices. If the judge feels it lessened the emotional impact of the story, then, yes, they should certainly say so and score accordingly in the appropriate place, but don’t give 2’s just because the writer switched POV and you heard they shouldn’t switch or you don’t personally like it. The score sheet didn’t ask you if you personally like multiple POV, did it?
Even the “no passive voice” rule isn’t one. Sometimes a writer uses passive voice on purpose. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s bad. Passive voice is a tool, just like active voice, and there’s a place for it, especially in historical romance. I personally think passive voice works better than active voice in scenes where there is thinking, rather than action, such as a sequel (following an action or dialogue scene), where the heroine is analyzing or just feeling her emotions. Or maybe the writer is using passive voice to show that the character sees herself as a victim who is never responsible for anything bad that happens to her, or to show her weakness of character. The RTTA training has a page on passive voice, telling the judges what it is and what it is not (a lot of judges think they know what it is but clearly don’t if they are telling you that every “was” and word ending in “ing” is passive voice), and that passive voice is another writing tool–not the bad guy. The bottom line question you should ask yourself as a judge is, Does the scene evoke the emotion that the writer is striving for?
And finally, I guard against letting my personal bias enter into my judging. I like a duke or a titled lord for a hero, and a sweet, naive heroine (ala Judith McNaught), but my preferences as a reader and a writer of my own stories should have nothing to do with my judging of an entry. I always ask myself, for this kind of story is the writer doing a good job? And I try to judge by the score sheet, though again, many of the score sheets ask things like, Does the writer avoid using adverbs or Does the writer use active voice rather than passive. I think those are poor score sheets because they assume that the writer doesn’t know how to correctly use the tools of writing. I’ve never seen any writer use as many adverbs as J.K. Rowling does in her Harry Potter books, but that’s part of her writing style and I dare anyone to say it doesn’t work for her. Sometimes an adverb is exactly what is needed and anything else is too much.
If you want to be a better judge, I recommend judging the RTTA contest. Not only will you get to read their excellent training document, but they ask each judge to score one or two sample entries from their files section and post the score sheets back to the loop. You’ll get feedback on your judging technique, and you can also search their previous posts to see how others judged the same sample so you can compare your scoring to theirs. I found that to be extremely helpful.
What sort of steps do you take to polish the format and presentation of your entry?
I don’t do any polishing; I wouldn’t be entering contests if my entry wasn’t ready, although I do recall one contest where I rushed because I was completely rewriting the scene. There was a midnight deadline and I did a Find and Replace on a character name and ended up with typos that I didn’t realize I had. Like planned became plemilyd—Anne to EmilyJ . I submitted the entry (with the typos) at something like 10 seconds before midnight. And then the chapter ended up extending their deadline, which was really annoying!
Sometimes I do change my entry to fit into the guidelines of a contest. For instance, if the entry calls for the beginning of the manuscript, I make sure my hero and heroine’s meeting scene fits within the page maximum because most contests ask questions about the H/H interaction. If I have to get rid of 5 extra lines on a page, that might mean taking words out of 5 different paragraphs so that the last line wraps up to the line above in each paragraph, saving me a line each time. Or, if it’s a first chapter contest, I take out “Chapter 2” and put in a scene change there so that the H/H meeting will get in. My chapters are short, so that’s doable.
What are the downsides of entering contests, in your opinion?
I think the biggest downside is losing your voice or the emotion of a scene. This may not happen to writers who are really confident, but for those of us who aren’t, it’s a real danger. In the beginning of my contest experience, I was constantly changing my ms because of judges’ comments. (BTW, if that last sentence were in my ms, at least 7 out of 10 judges would tell me I used passive voice and that I should change it to read “I changed my ms constantly.” Yes, I could change it to past tense and move the adverb so that it doesn’t split the verb, but it’s not passive voice as I’ve written it. “Was changing” is past progressive tense, which denotes action that was ongoing in the past, and by putting “constantly” between “was” and “changing,” I am placing emphasis on the fact that I changed it over and over. I happen to prefer my way—I guess that’s part of my voice—but in the beginning of my contest experience, I would have changed it in a heartbeat per the judges’ comments, even though I wouldn’t have liked it as much.)
In your experience, which contests were the most organized and well run?
I wish I could answer this, but I can’t remember which ones stood out in this respect. And besides, it only takes one judge who doesn’t get her entries back in time to screw everything up. However, every contest should have a contingency plan for those screw-ups.
I will say, though, that the best prize I ever got was the wood and brass engraved plaque from Heart of Louisiana’s Labor of Love contest. I don’t have any of my certificates hanging—not even for first prize—but that plaque has a place of honor on my Grandpa’s cherry knick-knack shelf. Too bad it says Third PlaceJ
When do you think it is a good idea to “retire” an entry?
I guess it’s when you’ve gotten what you came for. For me, it was the comments I needed to improve my manuscript to where I was satisfied with it, and I was also hoping to place first so that I could put that in a query letter. Other people are after other things.
What are your pet peeves regarding contest organization?
My pet peeve is a coordinator who doesn’t follow the contest rules, and the rule that’s really annoying when not followed is when a contest requires that a judge comment on any score that’s a 3 or less, but the judge doesn’t do it and the coordinator allows it to go through. If they aren’t going to adhere to their rules, they should do away with them. Those of us paying money choose contests based on these things and it’s frustrating to enter a contest that assures us of comments, only to get the entry back with low scores and no, or very few, comments as to why.
What are the main writing points that you check to ensure your entry is the best?
When I enter it’s with an entry that I’ve written to the best of my ability at the time so I don’t check anything specifically for contests. That said, it never hurts to check the score sheet to see what the judges are supposed to score on. Even for a new writer who perhaps isn’t entering contests, it can be helpful to check score sheets. It does remind you about the five senses, etc., though if you’re going to add something because of a contest score sheet, do a good job of it. Most readers can tell when someone throws in another line to get two more senses into the scene!
Can you give us your overall opinion on writing contests?
I think they are a wonderful tool as long as you keep everything in perspective and remember that what you’re getting is just another person’s opinion.
What is the best thing that happened to you from entering contests?
Honestly, I think the best thing that happened was discovering Donna Caubarreaux’s Contest Alert group on Yahoo. I was looking for resources to aid in updating my contest page and I discovered Donna’s blog at http://contestdivas.blogspot.com
There’s a link there to join her Contest Alert group and so I did. There I met some of the most supportive, uplifting and gracious romance writers that I’ve had the pleasure to meet during this journey, and a few have become close friends. Writing is a lonely business, yet when you’re a writer, that’s pretty much what’s on your mind, and therefore, what you want to talk about. I have supportive friends here at home, but they aren’t writers and they don’t truly understand how important my writing is to my identity.
Also, my contest finals helped me to get an agent, and I’m sure of that. I participated in a query workshop run by Backspace ( http://bksp.org ) , and the agents who critiqued our queries said it did mean something to them to see that a writer had finaled in contests. I only mentioned one contest in my query letter (“took first place in Heartland RWA’s 2008 Show Me The Spark, ranked by May Chen, Patience Smith and Rhonda Penders”) because I felt that particular one, with the first place win and 3 editors doing the ranking, was the strongest. I didn’t have enough room to add more than that, anyway. Though many agents take email queries, some—including my agent, Helen Breitwieser—take only postal mail, so I wanted to keep the query to one page.
You may wonder why I place the Contest Alert group as the best thing that happened, above landing an agent. It’s because I don’t think I would have queried agents without the support—and push—of the friends I made on the Contest Alert loop. As I said, I lack confidence, so support of other writers means a lot. Plus, the writers on that loop are serious about getting published, and it’s near impossible to sit back and do nothing to achieve your dreams when the writers you talk to on a daily basis are working so hard at achieving theirs.
What are the most important things that a writer new to contests should know before they enter?
That everything—especially finaling—depends on the luck of the draw of the judges. That’s not to say that if you finaled you didn’t deserve it. But if you didn’t final, you might have deserved it just as much, but you got a low score from a judge who was inexperienced, hateful, or who honestly didn’t think your entry was good—which doesn’t mean that it wasn’t. Some judges are not trained, or even if they are, they can’t set aside personal bias. Some judges aren’t even good writers.
On the other hand, many judges are excellent writers who are truly trying to help you, and some of them may give you the best advice you’ll ever get, even if you don’t think so at the time. Reflect on every piece of advice, but don’t automatically take it or assume it to be right. Google the terms that are used to see if you can find out anything else. Ask other people what they think, or change your prose per the advice and then ask someone to read both and tell you what they think. Judges are writers with their own opinions. Take what works for you and leave the rest.
Where on the web can people find you if they want to know more about your writing?
http://stephiesmith.blogspot.com is my blog, but it’s not just about writing and books
http://www.stephiesmith.com is the main link to my website
http://www.stephiesmith.com/contests.html is the contest chart
http://www.stephiesmith.com/promotion.htm l is the new chart I’ve added that has to do with author promotion. Anyone who’d like some free PR for their upcoming book or website can email me to add their links into the Credit By column for any existing row that is empty in that column, or for a new item they want to add. This is a work in progress.
Do you have any writing wisdom you want to share with new writers?
Contests are like everything else in life. Your perception is everything. Don’t take the comments personally; sift through the advice, taking whatever is helpful. And remember that contests are just another tool for you to use on your journey to publication.
Great advice. I’ll try to remember that.
Thanks for coming and talking to us today Stephie. And good luck with your writing endevours.
Thanks to everyone who dropped by today. I hope that like I did, you learned a few new tricks by reading Stephie’s wisdom on writing contests. She certainly looks like she knows what she is doing.
Next week, on Monday Dec 29th, I’ll be asking paranormal and erotic romance writer Cynthia Ann Arends/Sindee Sexton for her writing wisdom.
Until then,
Happy Holidays everybody 
Virgin Harvest (erotic futuristic historical fantasy) 
Posted by Marie-Claude Bourque 
Hi everyone,
