The following chapter explains our methodology behind judging entries. 

CATEGORY AWARDS

Category awards are determined by a panel of judges and not community-based. 

Judges are free to use their own personal rubrics, but as a general rule of thumb, a book's success is determined by the following factors:

Plot/Characters

Grammar/Structure

Enjoyment/Emotional Impact

Personal Voice

Some judges may weigh one factor over another, dismiss one factor entirely, or include other factors in their decision-making processes. Each category has multiple judges with different perspectives. One judge may really like a particular book and another may not; this can be to your advantage or disadvantage. This Awards account employs as many judges per category as possible to vary opinions and come to the single, most accurate verdict possible for a book.

In each category, we employ a technique called the Borda Count (Used in Mario Kart Wii) to assess a fic's overall appeal. Here's a simple explanation of the Borda Count:

Each judge assigned to a particular category will rank all books in said category. Zir first choice will be rank 1st and zir last choice will rank nth(n being the number of books in that particular category). Numerical values will be assigned to their respective places. A book ranked 3rd will receive 3 points, a book ranked 13th will receive 13 points, etc. 

Of course, there are multiple judges determining the final placement of a book in a single category. These points are added up amongst the judges and determine the final rankings of a category. If a book received 3rd place on one judge's rankings and 5th on the others, the book would receive a total of 8 points and be placed on the final rankings for the category based on that total.

SPECIAL AWARDS

After being sent some feedback involving our process, we decided on something that is fair, efficient, accurate, and still rewarding.

The Special Awards process starts with the moment our judges start reading entries. Throughout reading, judges are encouraged to keep in mind the various awards we offer, especially concerning Best Quote or character awards.

Each judge is required to submit a list of their Special Award nominations, trying to nominate one book from each of the categories zie is a judge for for each Special Award. This is flexible because the One Shot or Short Story categories may not be as qualified for some Special Awards.

After all judges have submitted their nominations, an administer in charge with the Special Awards master list will combine them all, eliminating redundant entries that were nominated multiple times for the same Special Award.

Once that step is completed, the representatives of each category and judges covering the most categories will come together to discuss the final nominations for each Special Award. At this point, a particular award may have 8+ nominations that we want to narrow down to at most 5 for the community poll.

We have a couple of rules that we follow:

A book cannot be nominated for more than 3 Special Awards

A Special Award should have at least one viable nomination per category with the exception of some awards

For an author who entered multiple viable books, we may use discretion when nominating across books from the same author

The goal of this discussion is to balance books that legitimately are competitive for the Special Award, promote books that have not gained a lot of recognition in that year's competition, and prevent popularity sweeps in the community polls. This ultimately boils down to our discretion as to how this balance is struck.

After the choices for each Special Award have been narrowed down, an administrator (one who is NOT competing) will conduct the survey. The finalized nominations will be subjected to a community vote. This is usually open for about a week before the results are released.

Objective Awards

The Pushing Boundaries Award is a collaboration between the Pokémon Writers Debut and the Pokémon Watty Awards. This is the only Special Award that is not in the community poll.

For this Special Award, judges nominate books like normal and the choices are narrowed down to at most 5 like any other Special Award. However, instead of being introduced in the community poll, members of the Pokémon Writers Debut pick between the choices for the Special Award to determine its recipient.

The Best in Show and Best New Author Special Awards are based on formulas. These formulas can be found in the LIST OF AWARDS chapter.