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I’ve been a judge for a lot of writing awards. The deliberations are always strictly confidential, and I can’t say anything about specific contests, but I can tell you a bit about how the process works from a judge’s perspective, and what you can do to be more competitive.
But first, if you’ve ever won a contest: Congratulations! Your work was brilliant, the judges were brilliant, and awards are a fair and accurate recognition of the best writing in your field.
Second, if you’ve ever been a finalist or gotten an honorable mention: Congratulations! Your work was also brilliant! It can sting to find out you were so close to winning an award but didn’t get it (been there, felt that), but it’s still a big honor.
For everybody else – which is actually everybody, because even people who have won an award have lost many more – here’s some background on why they’re so hard to win and how to think about them.
For starters, do enter the dang contest. Don’t wait for an editor or your publication to nominate you. Most of the awards are free to enter and you can self-nominate. The judges rarely see and wouldn’t care who did the nominating.
If you’re sending in multiple entries, don’t enter as many as the contest allows just because that’s the limit. People often enter great stories paired with weak ones, and that knocks down your chances of winning.
If one of your entries has a correction? Find another entry. At least one judge might say that’s a disqualification. (The exception is if the error was identified as being by someone else: “Due to a production error….”)
If a story is about a subject that a lot of publications covered, make sure your story clearly surpassed the others in some way and/or was distinctive.
The judges are looking for excellence many different qualities: writing, reporting, impact, range, depth, creativity, timeliness, difficulty of execution, how well the work serves its audience, originality of story ideas …
It’s very hard to pick a winner because the entries differ on so many dimensions. And it’s very hard to pick a winner because there are SO MANY excellent entries.
That’s the best part of judging -- you get to read everybody’s best work from the year. Even after we’ve lost so many publications – VERY sad to lose @PacificStand just this week – there’s still so much great science writing.
But I think there’s less and less good editing, copy editing, and fact-checking. I feel like I’m seeing more typos, errors, omissions and other problems lately. It could be that I’m just sensitized to it as an editor. Anyway, find yourself a good editor. Everybody needs one.
There are usually two rounds of judging, and the entries that make it to the final round are terrific. That’s why some contests, including @KeckFutures from @theNASEM, name finalists -- the judges want to recognize those works and encourage other people to go read them.
At a workshop on the business of freelancing that @cragcrest ran a few years ago, we had a discussion about career goals, and someone mentioned wanting to win an award. Christie, who has won lots of awards, said, basically: Nooooooooo ooo ooooo
Don’t make that your goal. You have so little control. It’s so much about luck. Enter contests, sure, but don’t expect to win and don’t let it get you down if you don’t.
The best judging gig I ever had was for The World’s Finest Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest, run by @Open_Notebook and organized by @helenfields @kramsayer & Joanna Church theopennotebook.com/peeps/
After agonizing about how to pick a winner, the judges said, fuck it, let’s give MOAR AWARDS. So we ended up recognizing Best Use of Peeps, Best Science History, Most Accurate Representation of History, etc. & adding age categories. We took it *seriously* theopennotebook.com/2019/04/17/pee…
Anyway, good luck out there. Please add your own advice for people entering awards to this thread. And if you ever do win an award, please remember to thank your editor.
