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Section: Et Cetera 4 March 2010 The Bridport Prize: adjudicating the adjudicators Ah, fiction-writing contests. Pity the poor adjudicators (and their minions) who have to sift through hundreds - sometimes thousands - of awful attempts at literature or storytelling. But ... should we really pity the adjudicators? Sometimes when one reads the selections that made it into print, it's impossible to believe (even on simple statistical grounds) that the 'best' top ten short stories selected from several thousand could really be so awful. But then you read the adjudicator's report and it becomes obvious what the problem is. The report will feature an awkward prose style; sweepingly abstract statements ('transcendent' is my favourite red-flag word); and lashings of airy, unfollowable advice on what constitutes 'art'. In short, the problem is not the mediocrity of the entrants, but of the adjudicator. And first prize for Adjudication Mediocrity must surely go to The Bridport Prize[1]. A friend and I were recently emailing one another about this very competition. I sent her some advice and observations, which I have reproduced verbatim below (with some relevant links). Enjoy: Here are the top three reasons (counting down) that I stopped entering the Bridport competition: 3. Bad adjudicators, part I. In 2005, the judge's short story report contained the following passage: "A story is more, and sometimes less, than a piece of wonderful or atmospheric writing ... I think it should involve some transformation of consciousness."The Bridport Prize receives about 5000 entries per year. Even setting aside the fact that the above piece of advice is obviously not implementable, can you imagine the deluge of prose abominations that would result from 5000 people all trying achieve 'some transformation of consciousness'? 2. Bad adjudicators, part II. In 2008, the judge's short story report contained the following passage: "I smiled when I read the covering letter which arrived with the stories from head story-sifter Jon Wyatt - 'You would not believe the number of stories that purport to be 4998 words long.' Just because there is a limit of 5000 words for the Bridport Prize, you don't have to meet it."I smiled when I read this because anyone who has ever entered one of these contests knows that more often than not, the writer will go over the 5000 word limit, then scale down. Quite often this involves making painstaking and minute changes until you have arrived just under the limit. The Bridport crew seem to think that the entrants who had reached this very delicate stage of the editing process were actually scaling up. Not only was the 'head story-sifter' incautious enough to announce his faulty observation, but the adjudicator didn't have the smarts to spot it either. But wait. It gets better: 1. They break their own rules. Painstaking and minute changes made with a view to observing the 5000-word rule are wasted. I once downloaded the 2006 Bridport anthology: it revealed that the first prize (of £5000, no less) was awarded to a story that had exceeded the allowable word limit.[2] When I emailed the Bridport guys to get an explanation for this, I got a boilerplate non-apology and a promise to follow processes better.[3] No public statement was ever issued: there's no mention of this gruesome blunder anywhere on the site. Two years later (as revealed in the above point), the adjudicators were chuckling at entrants who were trying to observe the very rule that they had themselves disregarded. Moral of the story: Don't assume adjudicators know what they are doing: often they are self-discrediting nincompoops. Learn to know which competitions not to waste your time and talent on. | ||||||
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