Background on the Judging · Marlowe and Christie Writers

Background on the Judging

We had over 540 entries this year. Quite a small number were highly commended, and those who will be sent to the critics and win will be selected from this list.

Around 250 entrants were commended. A commended list of that size can look surprising at first glance, so it's worth explaining how it's arrived at.

Every entry was read blind — judges had no idea whose work they were assessing — and scored against a fixed editorial rubric set before reading began. This involved meeting a basic standard of literacy and originality and then being marked on characterisation, use of language and making the reader want to read on.

Commended isn't a capped list or a quota handed out so that everyone goes home happy. It's the mark for work that genuinely cleared a real editorial bar. The reason the list is substantial is simply that the standard of entry this year was high, and a great many writers met it. That's a fact about the quality of the field, not a softening of the standard. Being commended is a real achievement.

Feedback, for what it's worth, is entirely optional and quite separate from the result — it exists because writers asked for it, and it has no bearing whatsoever on whether a piece was commended.

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Background on the Judging