Will the judge of the short story competition share any of her observations on entries? I wonder how you whittle down from 3,000 entries, what is the process, how long does it take etc.... Might be interesting to hear her point of view and see how it's done?
Cool question, Rosie!!! I really hope they do that... but with 3000 entries?
I agree Malcolm. Perhaps THE judge will only see those short listed. Feedback from competition judges could be useful but doesn't often appear. Some competions offer critiques at a price.
Good luck,
Rosa.
Other competitions I know of, have a group of people - usually junior office staff and interns in many cases - who 'sift' through the mass of entries, bringing it down from a large number in stages. Perhaps from 3000 to 1500, then they swap and read the stories put into the sifted pile by someone else. This pile is then reduced to say 500 and so it goes.
The final judge(s) usually have to go through a fairly small number, such as this short list. But I know of one case where there were five judges and they were each given a share of the entire entry pile to go through.
With one judge, whom you expect to pay good detail to all the stories put in front of them, it would be unreasonable to give them more than say twenty or so to work through.
So if you're short-listed it's because of your massive talent and dedication to your craft.
If you are not short-listed, it's clearly because some jerk who doesn't know their ear from their elbow, and who has been forced to read 100 short stories when they want to be listening to death metal music, hasn't the wit and wisdom to see your pearl of a story that has been thrown in amongst the pig food.
I wouldn't expect any feedback other than the usual 'unusually high quality of the entries making this an extremely difficult choice' stuff at this stage.
;-) PabloJ