The winning ingredients: presentation

Number of entries received for the 2008 InnermoonLit Award for Best First Chapter of a Novel to date: 3

Now here’s a mysterious category from the scorecard. Are we judging entries based on the quality of the paper they’re printed on or the fanciness of the packaging in which they arrive? No—it’s all online, remember.

So are we referring to submissions that come in with the formatting intact versus those that somehow get garbled in transmission and end up with triangles and accent marks where all the normal punctuation marks should be? No, we don’t hold mysterious formatting glitches against you.

‘Presentation’ simply means the entry’s language—its diction, syntax, tone. Entries that are well written receive high marks in this category. Keep in mind that ‘well written’ can mean rich and poetic writing or it can mean sparse, invisible writing, depending on what seems appropriate for a particular piece of fiction. As always, there are no black-and-white, one-size-fits-all rules where fiction is concerned.

Also falling under this category are


grammar and mechanics.

//cue the blood-curdling screams and horror movie music//

But we’ll talk more about that later.