The Turquoise Spotlight Awards

Rules and Info

Rules

1] All applicants must follow these rules or they will be disqualified.

2] No bribing others to vote on your book.

3] You can enter up to three books in total, but they must all be in different genres.

4] Don't hate if your book doesn't win. Learn from the experience and build yourself as an author!

5] Be patient. There are only three of us and we all have our own lives. Password: your favourite animal. The results could take some time, though we will try to be as fast as possible.

6] Be nice in the comments! Please, no fighting, although we appreciate encouragement and congratulations between contestants.

7] Most importantly, of course — Have fun!

Genres

Here are the genres we will and will not be judging.

We will accept:

Adventure

Action

Fantasy

General Fiction

Historical Fiction

Mystery/Thriller

Science Fiction

Poetry

Paranormal

Teen Fiction

Short Story

Horror

Humour

Spiritual

*Fanfiction

We will NOT accept:

ChickLit

Non-Fiction

Romance

Random

Werewolf

Vampire

And there are some restrictions on what Fanfiction books will be allowed. More on that below.

The Go About Fanfiction:

We were originally going to skip out Fanfiction as well, but I thought I might give at least some chance. I, Jay, decided I should try to at least judge a few. But, this means there will be some restrictions. I will not accept mature Fanfiction, and there may be some others I'll reject, but for the most part any Fanfiction stories that aren't mature should be accepted. I'll give my reasoning for rejection if I do reject any Fanfiction. Please note that if your Fanfiction is accepted, I may not have read the original story you have written about.

Judging

Now to talk about the judging process. Anna and Ruby will judge their categories, and I'll judge Fanfiction and possibly help my triplets with some of theirs if they need help. For the first stage, we will use a point system. Each book will start with ten points, and we will add and deduct points for certain reasons. We will  be using a set system - e.g. a system we check back to that will say things such as 'Punctuation: if excellent punctuation, 5 points. If mediocre punctuation, 3 points.' etc. - which we will most likely not post anywhere on Wattpad. This is used to ensure the judging is fair. Here's an example of judging, using a completely unreal story;

I finished reading this book. It had good grammar, so that's two points. It also had an interesting and original story plot, so that's another five. But, there would often be unexplained and unnecessary time skips, so I'll deduct three points for that. And finally, it is a less noticed story, so an extra three points. That brings this story to a total of seventeen points.

Books can have negative points, or really high points - there is no limit in either direction. If you want to know how yours or any other book in this competition got the point score it did, we will be uploading a book after the winners are announced that shows our reviews and reasoning.

As for the second round, which I judge, I will use a similar system which is... in a way, yet uncertain, hard to explain. If I miraculously find the words to explain, I'll do it here. [edit: still no idea how to explain]

The Point System and Our Purpose — Less Noticed, Extra Points

So, our purpose is mostly to bring less recognised authors into the spotlight — the Turquoise Spotlight. So we needed some way to seperate the less and more noticed authors. We firstly considered having two Levels, 1 and 2, but denied the idea when thinking about how to address Awards — would there be two awards per genre, one for Level 1 and 2? We said no, and then we agreed on my idea of this; since we are using the point system, less recognised authors will get a point bonus so they have an slightly higher chance of winning, meaning the less noticed authors are more likely to go further through the competition. The point bonus will most likely be five points, but we may change this, and the definition of a less noticed book is any entered book with less than one thousand (1000) reads.

The Audience Choice Distinction and Turquiose Spotlight Award

The Audience Choice Distinction (ACD) is probobaly one of the highest awards in this contest. To win it, your book must be voted by the audience. Everyone will get two votes, everyone, excepting second, or third (or fourth), accounts, or joint accounts. When I say everyone, I mean entrants or the average reader or someone just skimming past. Only main/first accounts may vote, but each account only two votes. I'm sorry if I'm saying this a lot, but I need to enunciate on this.

You may give those two votes to any book except your own (if you're an entrant). You can split them, and give one to this book and one to another, or you can give them both to the same book. Up to you. When the judging is completed and the winners are decided, that is when we count up the votes to decide the ACD winner. In the event of a tie, we will have a final showdown where everyone gets one vote and we have about a week for votes to be entered, and that will decide the winner.

As for the Turquoise Spotlight Award (TSA), that will be the favourite of us, Anna, Ruby and Avianna. We will each choose a favourite, and privately (not on Wattpad) try to convince the other two that our choice is the winner. In the event that none of us choose to budge in our choice, the book which had received the highest point score will win. If even then there is no winner, we'll figure something out when the time arises.

When you enter, please enter the book through the account on which the book is published, otherwise the entry will not be accepted. If there is a reason you cannot enter through that account, please let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Please ask any questions in the comment section of the next chapter.