2007 Bards and Sages Finalists Announced

I am very pleased to announce the finalists for the 2007 Bards and Sages Writing Contest.  Each year, we sponsor a new contest designed to benefit charity.  This year's contest benefits DonorsChoose.org, a non-profit organization that matches donors with schools in underprivileged neighborhoods to help finance school activities.

We had over 100 entries to this year's contest, which featured the theme of "Legendary Horrors."  Contestants revisited some of the classic motifs of horror, from creepy houses to things under the bridge; from lycanthropes to Boogeymen; and more.  We narrowed the field down to 11 finalists.  They are:

Richard Deal, A Gypsy's Gift to Lucas
Brian Pettera, Night Tales Not Told
Kyle Patrick, Reawakening
Charlotte Mielziner, The Secret
Die Booth, Dogged
Norma Lehr, The Yard Sale
Jeremiah Donaldson, Spirit Night
Art Carey, Three's Not Company
Tim Kane, Zombie Maker
David Hart, Mud Hallow Bridge
Oren R.S. Meyer, Stranger

You can read excerpts from the entries here.

 The winners will be announced December 1st.  Congratulations to all of the finalists!

All non-winning entries also received short critiques of their work.  At this time, I think it might be good to highlight some of the reasons submissions did not make it into the finals.

Poor grammar/punctuation:  While we all make typos and spelling errors, constant poor grammar and punctuation make it difficult to follow the story.  In many cases, it diorectly impacted the mood and pacing of the story, or made it impossible to follow dialogue.

Poor character development:  One of the key points of "classic" horror is that the reader needs to develop some empathy toward the characters.  When every character seem to exist for no other reason than to be eaten by monsters, the reader becomes numb.  Classic horror isn't about what happens to the character.  It is about our concern for what might happen.  If we don't care about the characters, we don't care about the story.

Unclear character motivation:  Hand in hand with character development, too often characters did things solely to move the story along.  The reasoning behind character actions were shaky at best, and generally felt contrived just to ensure that the character was in position for whatever was about to happen. 

The "Writing for TV" syndrome:  Many writers seemed to be writing their stories as if they were watching the story on TV.  Quick changes of POV and narrative voice, lack of good descriptive text, and an overreliance on dialogue killed many of the stories.  This is a common problem with new writers.  The written word is a different form of media than TV or film.  What works on the screen does not always translate to the page, and vice versa.  In writing, you do not have the benefit of lighting, facial expressions, sound effects, and other visual and audio stimulae to do your work for you.  Yet many of the submissions read as if the writer thought the reader was capable of seeing what was in the writer's mind.