Jillian David -- Paranormal romance, adventure and suspense. Just what the doctor ordered…
  • Blog
  • Book list/Free reads
  • Reviews
  • About
  • Contact/Newsletter signup
  • Interviews/Guest posts
  • Appearances
  • Contest results

New series -- Hell's Valley: chilly Wyoming nights, hot ranchers, psychic powers, and an emerging evil force that wants to destroy them all.

Link to Jillian's Amazon page

RITA scoring: Guesses, fear, and the feels

3/23/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
So, it was my first year scoring RITA’s for the RWA yearly contest. On the RWA website, there’s not a lot of explanation as far as what a 1, 5, or 10 means. Is it bad to get a 6? I don’t know. Can you only give out one 10 because that means “best book in the universe”? I don’t know. Is it only people with an average above 8 who make it to the finals? No idea.
 
Besides, who am I to be judging anyone, anyway?
 
And don’t even get me started on decimals…which is like the ultimate splitting-hairs hedge option. An hour of my life disappeared as I grappled with “is it 9.4 or 9.3”? Yeah.
 
In my day-job, the rule is to always give patients the benefit of the doubt. Easy enough. Sounds like a good rule to use for the RITA’s.
 
Therefore, in all transparency, I present to you – how to score RITA entries – Dr. Jill style.
 
#1) The scale starts at 5 and stops at 10. We’re going to call this the “RITA gonad” scale. You have to have serious writerly balls to simply enter this contest. If you have the guts to write, edit, publish, and enter an entire book, the contents of which are still glowing with the pieces of your soul that you ripped out and laid down on the page – that’s automatically worth a minimum score of 5. Just for making the massive effort and taking a risk.
Picture
​ 
#2) Genres I don’t read. Yikes. Here’s how I scored these books. Even if I didn’t dig the genre, I went with quality of writing + overall quality of book + imagining myself as a reader who capital-L Loved that genre and how they would respond to the book + an extra 0.5 points because I feel like my limited experience with certain genres puts those entries at a disadvantage. So. Lowest store possible on a genre I typically never, ever read? 5.5. (TBH, I kept looking for a secret power to shoot out of the sweet Amish woman’s fingers, or for the prim Regency lady to suddenly whip out nun chucks and just start wailing on the bad guy. Sorry, but welcome to my world.)
 
#3) Hot (or appealing), supportive dude + strong, confident heroine bonus. If the author gets that right, I’m tacking on 0.5 extra points automatically.
 
#4) Cliché deduction. Ok, show of hands. Who backs up a truck full of cliché’s and dumps them into their first draft? Yeah, me too. That’s why my editor has a fiesta calling out each and every one of them in my manuscripts. So, I've got a heightened sensitivity to them because that's my bad habit. A few cliché’s are fine, because maybe you can’t sanitize them completely away. But 15+ in a short novel? As my editor says: “You can do better.” Clichés are minus 0.5-1.0, depending on how distracting they are.
 
#5) Awesome cover bonus. Doesn’t have to be fancy, but should convey a sense of the book and have interesting images. Sexy abs are a plus. Extra few decimal points for how well the cover is put together.
 
#6) Sleep-deprivation bonus. Sleep is precious and sometimes rare. If your book keeps me up past my bedtime or makes me borderline-late for work, that’s an extra 1.0 point. No book has yet made me miss a delivery. That would be like 25 points on the 1-10 scale.
Picture

​​#7) Author props bonus. If the author did something really cool with a standard trope in such a way to make me go “wow, that’s pretty awesome”, that’s an automatic 0.5-1.0 points added right there.
Picture
​ 
#8) Grammar police deduction. No, I’m not the world’s best grammarian, so if I notice grammar errors (again, needs to be >5 to get annoying), then that’s 0.5 points off.
 
#9) Next in series bonus. If I’m picking up my Kindle and downloading everything else the author has written, based on the RITA entry, that’s like 1.5 extra points.
 
#10) Gestalt point. All right. Sometimes when I enter a patient room in the office or hospital, I’m hit with a blast of that’s-not-right or things-will-be-fine. There is no science behind it. There are no superpowers involved. It’s just a gut feeling. Even a finely edited book can still be “off”. Or a good book can have that intangible “something extra”. We’ll call these “gut points”, 0.5 points either way on pure instinct.
Picture

Agree or disagree, I’m certain there are a million ways to score RITA entries. It’s certain that some writers will be thrilled and others horrified by this scale. I’d love to hear how other authors/judges approach scoring RITA entries. Maybe I can incorporate these other authors’ scales into next year’s judging.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Subscribe for a chance to win free books and gift cards!

    * indicates required
    Email Format
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Jillian David

    Author, daydreamer, and practitioner of trying very hard to fix whatever's wrong with folks or at least duct tape them together

    Archives

    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    March 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    Categories

    All
    Adventures With Hubby
    Airports
    Cats
    Fastdrafting
    Funny Medicine
    Hell's Valley Series
    Hell To Pay Series
    Medicine
    Potpourri
    Star Trek
    Top 10 Lists
    Writing
    Writing Vs Medicine

    RSS Feed

    Tweets by @JillianDavid13
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.