The Judging Process: A Review

Perhaps a little pre-emptive considering there are some discussions left to have/that need other people's input, but it'd still be interesting to hear all of your thoughts.

So, what we have learned from judging the Carthage Awards, and how can we improve for next year?

I agree with Kelly, for one, that 'Romance' has been too broad a category and we should find a way to split that up somehow next time. Possibly same with 'General' (oneshots/multi-chapter?)

Preface: It sounds like I have a lot of criticsm, but honestly, the system works well. Especially considering that this was the first round of TCAs ever, we had a pretty much flawless run (yay!). The civil discussions all-around didn't hurt either.

I wish there would've been a way for all or some of us to have a (real-time) conversation going from category to category. I think we would've been better able to delve into the writing style and construction if we'd all been analysing and discussing the stories together. I also don't think there's ever a time when real-time discussion isn't beneficial. Hearing other opinions is always good.

I don't know if we'd get enough nominations to do this, but I want to suggest that one-shots and chapter fics be judged separately. In some ways, it's almost unfair to judge a chapter fic against a one-shot. One-shots will almost always have tighter and more concise writing and better pacing. Of course, we might not have enough nominations for that, and that's a reason why it wouldn't have been possible to do this year.

If we don't have Honourable Mentions already, it'd probably be possible to do them for the bigger categories. How I've seen it done on another award site is that there's the main winner and there's also a 'judge's pick'. I've also seen it done that there are specific awards for "Most Creative Plot", "Best Characterisation,", etc. I'm getting too ahead of myself here, since we're a smaller awards site, but it's an idea?

Would it also be possible for us to advertise more effectively next year? I feel like almost everyone on here is or was an active member of FFN, so we could've gotten more nominations, I think. Or maybe it's just a matter of being more pushy about it, heh.

(and really, idk about SJ's idea. 8| Rom/Gen would benefit from being split up, but how is that supposed to happen? Is there like a magical fairy we pray to about this?)